Quote:
Originally Posted by Simplicity
There's nothing stopping anybody from building anything, but I have personally been involved in deals that have fallen apart with the bank because of the parking issue; they're not convinced anybody will buy without parking and they've been proven right time and again.
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I think that this is the reality we are dealing with here. I've been a resident of Sky for the last year, as have my in-laws, and my parents have been in Sky since it opened (I know, hahaha). None of us would have bought if parking wasn't available (for us it was all included, but it's the availability to own that was the most important factor). Certainly, I use my car far less than I used to (previously daily, now weekly) and car-share would work for everything except going to the lake in the summer. Sure, this is more anecdotal evidence, but the market of car-owners (and want to keepers) is much larger than that of the willing to ditch the car crowd.
There are people who will buy without parking, and certainly a 1:1 ratio is unnecessary, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The condos in the area that don't include parking have proven themselves to be much more difficult to market. 132 James took a long time to sell and there's still some left. 128 James had to convert to rentals for a while at least, and 110 James is still 50% empty. The other difficulty is the lack of parking means the target market is younger, and thus 'lower-end' from a margins, not class, perspective. I think that's likely why 110 didn't sell as well as 132. I'm no developer, but I think that margins matter in all business, and even more so in heritage conversions where surprises are the norm, not the exception.
That being said, I agree that a stand-alone parkade would be a sub-optimal use of that space. Perhaps some sort of mixed-use development featuring a significant amount of parking at from floors 2 to whatever is needed, but no real public access, instead mostly sold, reserved spots for those who live above and across the street.
The answer to so many of the difficulties that people complain about downtown (most of which, I think, is more perception than reality) is residents...people who live there 24/7. To some degree this will require getting people to change their lifestyles and to change their perception of how they need to live. It's enough of a sea change to try to get folks to think of living centrally and smaller, getting them to ditch their car on top of it all will make it a non-starter for most. And Winnipeg's market is just too small to ignore the 'most.'