Quote:
Originally Posted by exit2lef
I'm putting myself in the shoes of a tenant who doesn't have a ton of disposable income and doesn't need a car often enough to justify owning one. With unbundled parking, that tenant doesn't pay extra for vehicle storage they don't need.
I have lived here a long time, and that makes me particularly frustrated to hear the same hackneyed excuses (too spread out, car culture, not enough density, etc.) repeated again and again, without question, when in fact I've seen many of those factors change substantially over the decades.
Also, I never said anything about change happening quickly. My desired scenario is both incremental and moderate. Most apartment complexes throughout the city should probably continue to package parking with rent, but buildings in a city center near high-capacity public transit should reconsider the practice -- not necessarily by building no parking at all, but by building less of it and charging a separate fee for it.
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I appreciate what you are saying. Has anyone done a study to determine the percentage of downtown apartment dwellers who own/use cars on a daily basis?
From a business standpoint you
have to offer parking, there's no way around this. I know what you desire and what you're saying makes sense in a vacuum. I agree, it would be great if these buildings would ease off the parking, but reality is reality. If you tell someone who can comfortable afford $3,000/mo for their luxury apartment that parking is $75/mo they won't even care. If you tell someone who lives paycheck to paycheck to pay their $1,400/mo rent they have to pay $50 for parking it can be a pretty big deal.
I'll use one of my employees as an example, she lives in a building downtown that has a parking garage and does not charge a monthly fee for parking. I'm asking her about it as I type this. She feels that an additional $50 - $100 a month to park her car is a non-starter. She wouldn't live in that building, she would "feel gouged". I think this is the type of person who is going to rent at Kenect. If the building lowers the rents $50 a month across the board to make parking a $50 charge, for example, then they're going to lose on every single unit that doesn't buy a parking space. That really hurts the bottom line and might be the difference between making the proforma look good enough to a buyer or being stuck with a dog of a building.
What this amounts to, in my mind, is understanding what will appeal to consumers and doing it. Building this apartment building is a money transaction and nothing more, they're not in Phoenix to try to initiate culture change or anything, they just want to make money and get out of their building.