The Urban Society’s approach suggested several public, shared garages built around the neighborhood. Those garages could then lease space to new development, so each project wouldn’t have to provide its own. It could easily solve the question of, “How much do we subsidize new garages?” The answer: none. Use the public garages, or pay for your project’s space yourself. And, if walking a couple minutes in an urban area isn’t your cup of tea, then perhaps another location would be better-suited for you. The accompanying diagram (Figure 4) shows the two recent projects in question, and several options for large garage locations within a 5 minute walk.

In the case of these two specific projects, nearby garages could support their uses as well as multiple other developments. The shared garages would support much more infill, and would importantly do so without giving preference to large-scale or small-scale efforts. Business users could use spaces during the day, and residents and visitors could use them in the evening and weekends. A small business could lease three spaces, just as easily as a large project wanting one hundred. The financing and operations of the publicly-owned garages would be clear and obvious to the public, and not part of complicated, project-specific development agreements. Developers could do their job—provide new housing, new shops, new offices, etc.—and the public sector can do its job—coordinate infrastructure and transportation needs. The developers could still even supplement their projects with a small amount of on-site parking, should they so desire. Both of these particular sites could use alleys or the backs of buildings to easily conceal some space for cars.

The proposed building along the streetcar line, in this case, could remain a four or five story, truly urban building without a need for structured parking. Less expensive! The proposed 120 spaces could easily be accommodated in a garage within a couple of blocks, while providing a dozen or so spaces on-site off the alley. In fact, the owner might find they don’t really need 120 spaces, and only wish to lease 80. Oh by the way, this building happens to be located on the streetcar line, too. The City and the property owners have already invested heavily in its success.

The larger, mostly residential site, proposes to build 400 spaces. Does it really need 400? No one really can know. But if 50 or spaces could be built inexpensively on-site, and another 200-300 offered for lease within a short walk, we’d have a much better idea of what the market truly demands. It would also make for a much less expensive building, and a more inviting street presence.

You Own It, You Control It

Publicly-owned garages can also serve broader needs very easily, instead of trying to coerce private entities. For example, the public agency can simply make the new garages hubs for new mobility, for ride-share drop off, for car share spaces, for links to transit, for e-bike charging, for scooters or whatever comes next. If you own it, you control it, and a public owner can quickly act on these sorts of public goods.

If the public owns it, it can control the design as well. The garages can be hidden behind other new development in order to maintain a consistent street presence when physically possible, and it can have storefront space on the ground floor. No arm-twisting of reluctant private owners is needed. In Kansas City, we have a long-term, successful example of how this was done on Country Club Plaza. The Plaza provides copious amounts of parking (one might even argue too much parking), and the majority of it is hidden from street view quite elegantly.