Your City's Major Parking Lot and What Was There Before
 

What are the significant parking lots in your city's downtown core. What was demolished to make way for it. What plans does the lot have in the future?

For example, Toronto has huge, significant lots on Front/Simcoe and Richmond/Victoria. These are both in the CBD. I know the future plans are for 56 Front office/condo, and the Yonge and Riich(mond) Condo by Great Gulf respectively. But what was there before? I know Toronto has some nasty lots south of the railway but I don't think they've every had anything on them.

Montreal has some nasty lots near the Bell Centre. What was there before? What does the future hold?

Try choose just 3-4 major lots in your city.

St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador

We don't really have any parking lots of a significant size in the downtown core. There are a few parkades, but beyond that there are really only a handful of very small surface lots.

The largest is probably this one, by the Johnson Building, but that barely counts as downtown:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8442/7...1b6b3433_b.jpg
Downtown St. John's from Southcott Hall by Signal Hill Hiker Photography, on Flickr

The largest actually in the downtown is probably this one, beside TD Place:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8205/8...a4c6ee9f_b.jpg
TD Place by Signal Hill Hiker Photography, on Flickr

The rest... as far as I can remember... are way, way smaller. The footprint of a single small heritage building.

Outside the core, however, we have many sprawling parking lots - especially around big box store developments. Another shameful mess is the parking lot around our government buildings:

http://binged.it/U58ylP

They are few and far between in downtown Ottawa (CBD) and fading fast.

The biggest one that was left was at Lisgar and Metcalfe, but even in the Google Streetview it is under construction for condos:

http://goo.gl/maps/ugn3l

In Gatineau over the past year or so they built this:

http://goo.gl/maps/VUh8C

... on what was until then the biggest downtown parking lot in the city.

We still have way too many left but several of them are slated for various condo and office projects at the moment.

our current biggest parking lot in the downtown core is one on queen street between church and jarvis. 2.5 acres, and with no current plans for it.

http://i899.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps7f35010b.jpg

another one is the One yonge parking lot, which is about 3 acres. It is currently planned to be replaced with 98, 92, and two 70 floor buildings.

http://i899.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps30017cb9.jpg



The biggest garage in the city is the City Hall garage, with 2083 spots.

Calgary still has way too many significant surface parking lots. Way too many.

They're starting to fill in at a fairly good rate though. There's not that many with no plans of some sort. The biggest concentration are along the CPR tracks and in the east side of Beltline.

There is a big parkade that's about to come down as well to make way for the big Brookfield office 225 6th.

This is coming down
http://cheapparkingcalgary.com/wp-co...eHeader_A2.jpg
http://cheapparkingcalgary.com/wp-co...eHeader_A2.jpg

as part of this:
http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_r...y=80&size=650x
http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_r...y=80&size=650x

What was demolished to make way for these parking lots?

For Hamilton I think it would be Downtown. :p

We had a giant parking lot in the west end of downtown that had been there for about 20 years. A great old residential neighbourhood was cleared so that the city could eventually build a new OHL arena there, but the city was not successful in getting one built, and so it just sat for 2 decades. It really just sucked the life out of that part of the core, and DT in general. There were so many ideas for what development should go there, but as usual, nothing ever happened, until last year, when the city decided to build the new aquatic Centre and indoor water park on the site. That whole area of the core now feels so much more viable and lively, with some great waterfront lots begging for some highrise condos to be built next door.

In Calgary, not much of value was lost to parking lots as not much was there in the first place. Calgary was a small prairie town that grew inorganically into a large city. The rail corridor through downtown was mostly sidings and warehouses with a few industrial operations. Those disappeared very gradually starting the the 1970s and not much has been built in place other than parking lots. That situation will likely change as developable land elsewhere downtown becomes scarce. 7th and 8th Avenues were the commercial streets of the old Calgary. Some great buildings were lost along there, but most became office towers not parking lots. 6th Ave had some commercial but also some SFH. 5th and 4th Avenues were mostly SFH. Areas closer to the river were a mix of SFH and industrial. 4th and 5th were redeveloped early in the 70s boom and don't have many parking lots. 3rd and 6th had lots of proposals during the 70s boom that didn't happen so they have lots of parking lots. The eastern and western corners of the triangle that forms downtown Calgary were industrial areas razed in the 60s and 70s in the name of urban redevelopment that is only not starting to happen (ex. East Village).

Kingston has two municipally-owned parking garages downtown. For a city its size, it's a pretty good system.

London has a lot of surface parking in its downtown. One of the largest is on York Street across from the Convention Centre, and it's former industrial land.

Every single one of these giant red blocks downtown is parking.

http://www.raisethehammer.org/static...lighted_lg.jpg (raisethehammer.org)

Hamilton always wins the crappy contests.

You cut off a whole bunch of them!
:(

Why are there so many people parking in downtown Hamilton?

Halifax used to have a lot more surface parking than it does now. Right now, there are about 5 blocks of active downtown construction sites that were formerly parking.

Unfortunately, most of the remaining parking lots are owned by various levels of government and there is little pressure for them to develop. The province often holds on to lots for decades if they think they might one day need them (or if they just forget about them). The Waterfront Development Corporation has traditionally been one of the worst offenders. They inherited a bunch of cleared industrial land in the 1970's and then proceeded to develop at what one commenter called a "leisurely pace".

You can see Halifax's "parking district" at the bottom of this photo:
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/6615/edited2c.jpg
Source

The biggest parking lot in Thunder Bay's south downtown is a year away from being a functioning courthouse. The biggest lot in the north downtown is about 8 years away from being a multiplex. The southern lot had a lot of nondescript buildings on it. The northern lot was always a dirt lot as far as I know. I have never seen a historic photo showing anything actually being on that piece of land, and its retaining wall is from the 1920s.

We have a lot of parking but it's really fractured into dozens and dozens of tiny lots all over the place. Parking can be a pain in the ass sometimes but we actually do have enough parking for most things downtown.

There are some dirt lots just outside of the south downtown but they're not legally used for parking. A few are fenced off. I'm not sure what is going on with them. I know a few are owned by the province and it is debating whether or not to sell them. I honestly don't see any good reason for it to keep those lots.

Well those ugly nasty lots around the Bell Center are all being repurposed as condo towers in the next coupla years.

Tour des Canadiens will be 48 or 50 stories but is not on a parking lot per se.
It will have a 13 story parkade podium because it is impossible to dig since the metro and a suburban rail station are too close.

But the parking lots across the street from it will hold 3 towers, the Avenue; 50 stories, and the two Roccabella towers on René-Lévesque blvd; 38 floors apiece. On the north side of R-L blvd will be Icône condos; two towers of 38 and 32 floors each also built on ugly parking lots are developed by the parking lot owners. Up Drummond street are two 21 and 23 stories towers on a parking lot also.

I'd nominate the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto. Officially it's an expressway, but in reality you may as well just abandon your car and go for a walk.

There's a lot of surface parking that occupies space where commercial and residential buildings once stood. The land in downtown London must be pretty worthless.

They're mostly empty most of the time.

And there's more not shown (I think I made that picture years ago)

And this is why I get so upset when they keep tearing everything down. 80% of downtown Hamilton has already been demolished, a lot of it buildings most cities would love to have.

I think the buildings are demolished and turned in to parking lots for tax purposes more so than because they are viable parking lots. i think the math looks like this:

parking income minus property tax on a parking lot

is greater than:

potential rental income minus building property tax and maintenance


this is especially true of vacant or abandoned buildings.

the city is also more likely to approve a shoddy building design on a parking lot/vacant lot than if an existing building is on site. this would be more true of a city like london, On or Regina, Sk than Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver who tend to have higher standards for any new construction, period.