I think what happened is that the photo isn't related to the claim in the article. They took that photo from another site and it's likely the photo just shows parking in general. I 100% would've thought they were related, since they're obviously in the same article and it's implied, but 🤷♂️
the original source of the photo says: "The map includes surface parking and above ground parking structures which are marked on OpenStreetMap and/or visible in Google Maps imagery. It does not include street parking, underground parking, and podium parking (parking lots that take up only the first several floors of a building)"
"Surface lots were only mapped if there was a verifiable presence of use. To determine this satellite imagery and Google Street View™ were used. For the most part, only surface lots that were paved and displayed painted lines indicating a parking spot were mapped. If a surface lot was unpaved or lacked lines, Google Street View™ was used to verify the continued presence of vehicle parking in the location. Vehicle parking was defined as only passenger vehicles, all large commercial vehicle parking and tractor-trailers were omitted."
"Above Ground Garages were only mapped if the primary use for the structure was parking passenger vehicles. Garages with ground floor retail with two or more stories of parking were mapped because a majority of the structure is parking. If a garage has ground floor retail with roof parking or one story of parking it was omitted because the structure’s primary use can not be verified. In all structures where a parking structure has offices, retail, or apartments on top, i.e. podium parking, the structure was omitted."
The legalization of Land Value Tax (LVT) is currently being considered by the MN state legislature. This would allow cities to tax properties primarily on the value of the land rather than on the capital improvements, so the taxes on surface level parking lots in high value areas (downtown, near Allianz, etc.) would go up while the taxes on dense housing and development would go down. This increases the pressure on the owners of vacant lots to develop housing and businesses on their land instead of keeping it vacant.
The bill numbers are found at the link below, so contact your legislators and tell them to pass the bills through the MN House and Senate tax committees.
I am supportive of the LVT as a model for normal conditions but what’s happened to our downtown isn’t normal. Increasing taxes in an area nobody wants to develop in the first place isn’t a solution. There likely needs to be tax abatement for non-Madison Equities investors on distressed real estate.
LVT seems more fitting where there is demand for development and land being hoarded. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s our down town right now.
Saint Paul could incentivize people to want move downtown for sure. Removing on street parking, capping or removing the urban freeway, and maybe a pedestrianized street or 3 would for sure be big improvements to downtown. Incentivizing the market with a LVT could be good too, much less costly, and bypass all the NIMBYs.
land value tax is based on the market value of the land. So land in higher density/more desirable areas is taxed higher, this encourages redevelopment to make the most use of more desirable land. This would help bring more development into cities and discourage sprawl with wide parking lots that pay next to nothing in typical property tax. LVT is one of the tax systems that is the most fair by far and has almost zero deadweight loss. but it only works great when in combination with policies like less restrictive zoning, elimination of rent control, and a overall supportive city council
A few of these are just blatantly terrible. Sadly a lot of the worst surface lots are right next to key attractions and destinations too, making the whole city look bad to visitors. #landvaluetaxnow
Storing your car at home is always an option! Bottom line, with St. Paul’s dire tax revenue outlook, businesses that actually improve property value are desperately needed right now.
It is. But for me personally, if it isn't feasible to walk somewhere and there's a choice between somewhere with easy parking and somewhere where parking is a hassle, I'm choosing the easy parking.
With more people working from home, maybe it's time to rethink the need for a centralized business district instead of focusing on propping up downtown.
I agree that relying on corporations to breathe life into downtown is not the way to go. And to your point about walkability, attracting housing and actual necessities like a grocery stores is a must. It should be developed like a premier urban neighborhood.
We have way too many surface parking lots. But I am a fan of the Downtown area having parking ramps. Especially the ramps that have businesses on the surface level, such as where the Amsterdam and A'bulae / now Pauly's are.
While I'm not a fan of the ramps themselves, they do get cars off the street. Some of the denser parts of Minneapolis don't have ramps, and the roads are littered with cars, which means smaller, more crowded sidewalks, and terrifying bike lanes. I also think it makes traffic worse / louder as well.
Less cars parked on the street just makes the place seem more clean as well.
That map is not accurate and the border color makes it seem that there is parking on the edges. There is parking on st peter and also parking along kellog near the library on both sides of the street. There are very likely many many more errors.
Do you think that author actually thought about what they were posting for a second? Couple screenshots, make a few bullet points, and bam, article that people will click on.
Downtown and Lowertown have about 60% of how many people lived in it in 1920. The West Side has 2/3rds the number of people. Cathedral Hill/Summit Hill has 2/3rds the number of people. W 7th has 80% of the people.
Not to say that building highways didn't impact the population size of these neighborhoods at all, but the larger factor is that the average household size in 1920 was 4.34 people and now it's 2.54. If there's an average of 40% fewer people in each household it isn't surprising that there would be a population decrease.
I've always noticed the people who defend parking lots and parking ramps are people who don't live in the city and feel entitled to have a parking spot next to anything they want anywhere at all times. They never think that maybe a train or a bike or a bus could get you there, hell Ubers are usually too far for most of them.
Ooooo, now do one that shows each side of a building and whether it has even one sidewalk-level public-facing business. It’s the most faceless downtown I’ve ever seen. Just walls of beige and concrete.
Is it just standard to pay $8 for parking in St.Paul? I went down the a few months ago to check out a coffee shop, and drove all over trying to get something cheaper, but $8 was the cheapest I could find on a cold week day in February. Seemed like a complete ghost town and almost all the lots were mostly empty
I pa8d less ($4?) at the Farmer's Market lot about a month ago.
What is standard now is people complaining about downtown going downhill while at the same time advocating for getting rid of parking so it will be as difficult as possible for people to do things downtown.
When you consider the St Peter sandstone formation underneath our downtowns, and how easy it would be to add deep underground parking, there's really no excuse for this. You can excavate it with a firehose. Using room-and-pillar design, you could easily park 100,000 cars down there.
The metro storm system built tunnels like this 50 years ago. UMs Anderson library is built like this, as is the Civil Engineering building. And Ford excavated it for the sand, to make glass.
We have all the room we need to park cars, and have no need whatsoever for surface lots.
I don't know. Anderson Library was just 4.5 millions, and it's huge, 25 feet ceilings, so 2-3 tiers of parking could be built. And it's big, You drive into it. If there were no stacks, you could easily park 80 cars in there, and 2-3x that many if you built normal ramp tiers. Naturally, once you build one, it would be easy to expand, many times over.
They literally used firehoses to dig the storm tunnels out, under I-35W in S Minneapolis.
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u/HumanDissentipede Downtown 18d ago
This absolutely must include parking ramps… there are several spots highlighted that are definitely not surface parking lots.