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  #321  
Old Posted Jan 15, 2019, 2:13 PM
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Originally Posted by micahinsa View Post
"Siri, show me the fugliest parking garage in human history."
Ha! And why are all those people hanging around outside such a fugly garage?

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  #322  
Old Posted Jan 15, 2019, 3:20 PM
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Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown View Post
Ha! And why are all those people hanging around outside such a fugly garage?
They're all looking for a dry cleaners/coffee shop/day care center/etc.
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  #323  
Old Posted Jan 15, 2019, 5:27 PM
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  #324  
Old Posted Jan 16, 2019, 11:38 PM
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Looks like the HDRC finally gave this the green light.

https://saheron.com/24-story-villita...esign-concept/
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  #325  
Old Posted Jan 16, 2019, 11:53 PM
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Originally Posted by Dan In Real Life View Post
Looks like the HDRC finally gave this the green light.

https://saheron.com/24-story-villita...esign-concept/
From the article, it looks like we got our answer concerning retail on St. Mary's. It wasn't feasible.

Quote:
Some commissioners expressed the desire for JMJ to include retail in the parking garage. But the JMJ team said it wasn’t possible because the circular design of the garage was taking up maximum space already.
With the reasoning now in effect... I'm good with the project.
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  #326  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 1:14 AM
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Why is the garage in a separate structure in the first place? If I were living there, I'd prefer it all under one roof.
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  #327  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 3:14 AM
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Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown View Post
Why is the garage in a separate structure in the first place? If I were living there, I'd prefer it all under one roof.
But, haven't you heard???

Walking is good for ya!!!

Glad to see this project has been given conceptual approval!!
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  #328  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 3:51 AM
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The thing is, all these stand alone parking garages are going to be a real fun thing to have when land values rise to the point that their owners knock them down to redevelop the land. Then what. Where will the residents of those places park? This is why below grade parking, or at the very least, structured parking within its tower is the way to go. Austin is already starting to knock down stand alone parking garages and redeveloping them with towers that will have either below grade parking, or parking within the tower. We at least have the silver lining benefit of our capitol view corridors where developers can put their parking garages beneath those view corridors, but for the lots that don't have them, those garages are destined for the jaws of destruction. Structured parking within the tower also has the benefit of making the building taller, though, some people don't like being 10 floors above the street on the "first floor" of residential. Some people prefer a first floor residence even in an urban setting.
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  #329  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 3:55 AM
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Originally Posted by jaga185 View Post
From the article, it looks like we got our answer concerning retail on St. Mary's. It wasn't feasible.



With the reasoning now in effect... I'm good with the project.
The article does state that the project will have retail on Villita St. and river level though.
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  #330  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 2:23 PM
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Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown View Post
Why is the garage in a separate structure in the first place? If I were living there, I'd prefer it all under one roof.
I would prefer that too. Maybe the size of the lot and the proximity to the river didn't allow for the garage to be built as part of the tower?

I'm not an architect or developer but I know we have a few on the forums so someone correct me on this if I'm wrong. That's just my guess.
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  #331  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 2:27 PM
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Originally Posted by micahinsa View Post
Some of the new renderings I grabbed from the HDRC PDF above:







I don't see how they couldn't include the retail that the HDRC asked about in the garage. They could put the entrance and exit on the corner where the ivy wall is, have the up and down ramps wrap around the back and have the whole structure be a continuous ramp/parking spaces. They currently have the corner cut off (see the first rendering), which takes away potential space where they could have at least one corner retail front if not more. Seems like a cop out.

And by the way, I'm clearly not the only one talking about retail here.
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  #332  
Old Posted Jan 17, 2019, 3:51 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown View Post
I don't see how they couldn't include the retail that the HDRC asked about in the garage. They could put the entrance and exit on the corner where the ivy wall is, have the up and down ramps wrap around the back and have the whole structure be a continuous ramp/parking spaces. They currently have the corner cut off (see the first rendering), which takes away potential space where they could have at least one corner retail front if not more. Seems like a cop out.

And by the way, I'm clearly not the only one talking about retail here.
Completely agree. They could have made the garage six floors, then have the ramps on Jack White going up. It doesn't make sense to me and feels like they didn't want to spend the money. A restaurant would have done wonders, like a diner, during lunch from Tower Life, and lunch and dinner from the Granada and the new tower.
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  #333  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 2:26 AM
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That's exactly it...they didn't want to pay the money for a larger structure or a fully-fleshed ground floor interiors all of which they have to pigeonhole into some potentially historically preservable structure that has very little of its historical streetscape integrity left. It's also hard for the city to overly insist for such, as the developers have to make the numbers work within their own available budgets, timeframes, and operating plan.

You almost wish the city could somehow create or expand the criteria of a development fund or abatement incentive whose purpose would be to offset the costs of putting habitable space on the ground floor of parking garage or incorporating garages off the ground floor of buildings or their streetfronts. Akin to affordable housing incentives, this would be complicated as hell and critics and opportunists would circle, but mistakes like this wretched garage are very difficult to undo, and the city is not in a good position economically downtown to constrain downtown development opportunities with so many demands such that downtown developers can't build anything. If we're going to be sinking billions of dollars into multi-tiered highway flyovers so that commuters on the far suburban fringe can save an additional minute on their commute, surely we can invest a small bit of that into parking solutions for downtown that leave the downtown core viable.

Oh well, I wonder what the Smith Brothers or Atlee B. Ayers would think seeing that the centerpiece of their once visionary dreams for "Bowen Island Skyscrapers" would ultimately be a parking garage that looked like a cage at the zoo.

Last edited by Hindentanic; Jan 18, 2019 at 2:43 AM.
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  #334  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 4:22 AM
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This is what happens when we try to have it both ways. We want a downtown that's vibrant, dense, and walkable, and we also want to drive our cars to every place. We can't really do both.
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  #335  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 6:28 AM
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Originally Posted by Spoiler View Post
This is what happens when we try to have it both ways. We want a downtown that's vibrant, dense, and walkable, and we also want to drive our cars to every place. We can't really do both.
Yes you can. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can have a dense and walkable urban core while still acknowledging cars. Do you think New York City has zero car interaction?

Cars are never going away, that’s not happening. So, it’s obviotsly a aspect of transportation that must be dealt with and addressed in even the most dense of areas.
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  #336  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 6:56 AM
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Originally Posted by Spoiler View Post
This is what happens when we try to have it both ways. We want a downtown that's vibrant, dense, and walkable, and we also want to drive our cars to every place. We can't really do both.
Sure you can. Mandate that parking be attached to new development, either as a pedestal, or underground.

You have to remember that the vast majority of San Antonio residents don't live downtown, yet want to visit downtown.

We, as yet, have no ability to ferry these residents DT and back reliably, and on their schedule, and there is no short term/affordable solution to do so.

I think we can agree that a downtown area of parking garages is not what we want.
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  #337  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 5:09 PM
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Originally Posted by sirkingwilliam View Post
Yes you can. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can have a dense and walkable urban core while still acknowledging cars. Do you think New York City has zero car interaction?

Cars are never going away, that’s not happening. So, it’s obviotsly a aspect of transportation that must be dealt with and addressed in even the most dense of areas.
I never said zero cars, and I don't need to imagine New York City as I have been there.

There is a big difference between "acknowledging cars" and making everything primarily accessible to the driver of a single passenger vehicle. I mean I guess there's a big difference, but I really have no idea what you mean by acknowledging.

I don't want cars to go away. I want cars to be part of a balanced system of transit. Why must every issue be defined by its binary absolutes? It's not "all cars, all the time" or "no cars, never" (actually, right now it pretty much is all cars, all the time).
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  #338  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 5:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Restless One View Post
Sure you can. Mandate that parking be attached to new development, either as a pedestal, or underground.

You have to remember that the vast majority of San Antonio residents don't live downtown, yet want to visit downtown.

We, as yet, have no ability to ferry these residents DT and back reliably, and on their schedule, and there is no short term/affordable solution to do so.

I think we can agree that a downtown area of parking garages is not what we want.
I doubt it's possible to make such a mandate, but if it is I'm all for it.

Regarding ferrying residents, that would naturally be a necessity. Unfortunately mass transit is pitifully funded in this city, even by Texas standards. Meanwhie, millions and millions of public and private dollars are spent annually here reinforcing the single passenger vehicle paradigm. This money is spent on enlarging and repairing roads and on parking. I'm against it. The only reason it's considered practical and necessary is because of the massive infrastructure it supports, an infrastructure that is the most wasteful and inefficient model, but one that benefits private corporations enormously.

I don't know what you mean by "downtown area of parking garages". One short-term band-aid for ferrying residents might be a number of park-and-rides scattered thoughout the city (more than the few we have now) offering express service to downtown and back. They could even take the freeways. This might be less convenient than driving, but if you create more deterrents to parking downtown, like not trying to make a parking space for every car, or charging a high price for parking there, then people will adjust.

Last edited by Spoiler; Jan 18, 2019 at 5:58 PM.
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  #339  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 8:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Spoiler View Post
I don't know what you mean by "downtown area of parking garages".
It's pretty self explanatory. I don't want to see DT full of stand alone parking garages rather than hotels, residential, office towers, and retail/entertainment outlets. It's a waste of land.
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  #340  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2019, 9:09 PM
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It's pretty self explanatory. I don't want to see DT full of stand alone parking garages rather than hotels, residential, office towers, and retail/entertainment outlets. It's a waste of land.
But that's exactly what we have now, except scattered throughout, not clustered. It's still a waste of land.
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