This parkade is going to end up being a large disappointment I think compared to what was promised and even what initial renders showed. The SAIT parkade and the Centennial Parkade are the two best examples in the city of what can be done and this will be a step back from both.
 
I agree. I think this will turn out looking like a pile of shit when it is complete. I envision it looking like the Bell Tower parkade on 10th Ave that has that crappy chain link fence in a wave pattern.
 
theres surface parking lots in eau claire 40yrs after remediation was done, and probably will be for another 20yrs.

east vic is massive, there is zero need for a $75mm parking lot in a sea empty lots.

its not even remotely close to either bmo or the arena. its an indulgent pet project across the street from city hall. that money couldnt have a worse use other than paying the planners that built it.

consider at the same time on 10th and 4th a parking garage in a much better location is being repurposed with picnic tables.
 
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pure folly = pure waste, and I'm not buying into the flex program idea. They should just stop and throw in a multi-tiered skate board park and call it a day. Oh, and Invite graffiti artists to finish the job and salvage whatever can be of this blight. Sorry, ranting but it's been a shite day.
 
1875 said:
theres surface parking lots in eau claire 40yrs after remediation was done, and probably will be for another 20yrs.

east vic is massive, there is zero need for a $75mm parking lot in a sea empty lots.

its not even remotely close to either bmo or the arena. its an indulgent pet project across the street from city hall. that money couldnt have a worse use other than paying the planners that built it.

consider at the same time on 10th and 4th a parking garage in a much better location is being repurposed with picnic tables.
Click to expand...
I forget if this has been answered: was this project a way to move money allocated to a parking garage to something more (including a parking garage)? Funding rules are strange and specific so I vaguely recall a big pot of money that was dedicated to build parkades only and some of that money going to this project. Is that a thing or am I totally wrong?

Regardless it doesn't make it right, as you stated. In no world does Calgary's city centre need more public parking - if parking was the issue the supply we have would have solved it already. Further, future-proofing garages is nice in concept but not really done. Indeed, the City Hall Parkade built in the 1980s was "future proofed" similarly to support a tower.

What I would love to see, is a true parking, supply and demand picture of the city centre. For all our progressive parking accolades I don't think it's been done. CPA might has a sense of their supply and demand due to ParkPlus, but CPA is only be one of many large parking downtown parking lot managers, let alone semi-public or private garages and street parking availability. Without the data this isn't confirmable, but I would bet Calgary's city centre has the most / highest concentration of parking spots in at least Western Canada, despite all our good policy over the years.

I took a 5 minute crack here to estimate parking supply within 500m: the distance from this parkade to the proposed arena. I only looked at CPA and Impark so missed all office towers, condos or any other parking provided by others. No street parking included. It's a rough guess and should be floor estimate, the total

LotDistance to Platform (walking)Stalls
City Hall Parkade70m640
Lot 79 (next to CPL)100m31
Lot 78 (next to CPL)105m33
Lot 77 (next to CPL)115m24
Lot 55 (North of NMC)200m347
Arts Commons200m136
Lot 63B/63C (along 10th Avenue near Village Ice Cream)250m86
Impark (North of Village Ice Cream)150m121
Impark (Bow Valley College)250m214
Impark (Calgary Tower)350m1398
Impark (Keynote condos450m388
Impark (Superstore)350m200
3,618

So within ~5 minute walk of this parkade we have 3,600+ (and likely many, many more spots with the aforementioned caveats to my low effort research) publicly available parking spots. If we take an assumption of 300 sqft / spot (typical average when including lanes and any ramps) and multiply it by my 3,600 stalls we have over 1 million sqft of parking within a 5 minute walk! That's the size of the 49-storey Eighth Avenue Place East Tower (fun fact EAP: has 1,141 parking stalls of it's own not included in it's sqft I think).

Supply is one side, demand is another with a much trickier. We often lean into measuring demand through qualitative measures ("it's hard to park at the new library!") because it's so tricky to estimate demand. Far more to unpack here I will save for a future rant: demand of what exactly? the parking lot? the library? how do we know the impacts of substitutions (ex. if we built $80M of housing instead of parking, or spent $80M to improve transit service to the area etc.) Way harder! Someone who knows about transportation stuff might want to dig into that one and explain the assumptions behind some rickety parking/traffic models.

The last thing critically important is it's not supply and demand today, it's supply and demand in the future as well. Will the City Centre need these stalls for it's whole design life of 30 to 50 years before we repair the thing or tear it down?

So it's tricky work but I don't see how through supply and demand a conclusion that more parking is a good answer. Even if it's shiny (or maybe not )
 
If I recall correctly, this parkade was partly funded by the City's cash-in-lieu program, which collected money from new office developments after restricting their parking supply to only 50% of bylaw. The collected money was to go towards "intercept" parkades, to limit traffic in the heart of the core. The program was not very well run, and The City was in the end not charging enough to construct their share of the parking required. The used the funds towards this project (but it was nowhere near the full $80 million cost), and shuttered the program. This occurred in 2017 I think.
 
Long time lurker here, this is from CMLC's Instagram from November 9th. Façade progress has been slow, but does anyone have a more recent update?

Platform nov 9.PNG
I
 
appreciate the great pictures but it kind of makes me feel sad celebrating a needless parking garage which the only redeeming feature seems to be lots of lights. just a spectacular waste if money. successful cities demolish parking garages, not build them in wastelands.
 
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They're using the first two levels for the Platform innovation centre so it's not going to be 100 percent a parking garage. I also think the plan is to demolish the parking garage across fromt City Hall after this is complete
 
^^ Exactly. The Innovation Centre, plus parking for the National Music Centre and Central Library, neither of which have parking.
 
Any idea what's going to replace it? Wouldn't be a bad spot for a little park or something, you got BVC to the west, the library to the south and Arris to the north.
 
A few more from the back, this shiny cladding at the bottom did look decent from afar in this light and got me intrigued but that quickly turned into a major disappointment as it does looks very cheap once you get close:
AC623859-8C53-4A59-940C-270BC00229FE.jpeg
F6DA7DB6-714A-4E79-B913-1296799AC178.jpeg
8A6D79BC-D3A7-47B6-AE79-5DD6B1C534A8.jpeg
455374D9-3145-4FF2-9D74-6C413DB777EB.jpeg
E4E667CF-7B48-4BF5-9E1F-5C53D5DAFE41.jpeg
1F11FD39-77BB-4799-B90F-0E0E0F7A76A9.jpeg
6C946091-E8D1-4D6F-B1D9-F4BBC599CA8C.jpeg

P.S. This cladding does look better in pictures I would say.
 
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