KCRag Forum

Convention services never sells BAP as an option for conventions to use....if it does they do a horrible job of selling it.

If there is a building, could we add park facing retail? St Louis's Gateway Mall is awesome and my wife and I enjoyed just grabbing a drink at Kaldi's and hanging out in the park when we were there.

I guess I’m fine with the development no matter what it becomes. I’m just worried that the park by itself will induce demand and $70m to make it happen seems like quite a gamble. How is this being funded?

You know all we really need to do here is dig a massive underground garage and then build the worlds tallest fountain on top.

Only half kidding, it would be awesome! Instant KC icon right in the heart of downtown. Realistically if at all possible it would be great if the design could incorporate the largest fountain in KC. Probably difficult on top of parking.

If there is a building, could we add park facing retail? St Louis's Gateway Mall is awesome and my wife and I enjoyed just grabbing a drink at Kaldi's and hanging out in the park when we were there.

Another fan of City Garden I see. Agree that the restaurant space there, while it went through several iterations, found the right tenant with Kaldi overlooking the sculpture garden. City Garden contrasts dramatically with the rest of the overly large, empty, adjacent to too-wide Market Street Gateway Mall to me, though I haven't experienced the redesigned Keiner Plaza yet.

I know it's on an entirely different level re: cost, site, etc. but I've been a conventioneer at Yerba Buena Gardens in SF, had lunch on the grassy park on top of the convention center entrance on a beautiful day, went to adjacent SF MOMA, etc.

At Yerba I thought of Barney Allis due to the proximity to Bartle and tiered design underground parking with park on top. Would be awesome to see a mixed-use civic structure that provides parking and manicured greenspace, invites peds from street level, and encourages activity with a focused retail or arts presence. Downtown still needs additional cultural draws, IMO; perhaps this could be a place to incorporate.

rxlexi wrote:Another fan of City Garden I see. Agree that the restaurant space there, while it went through several iterations, found the right tenant with Kaldi overlooking the sculpture garden. City Garden contrasts dramatically with the rest of the overly large, empty, adjacent to too-wide Market Street Gateway Mall to me, though I haven't experienced the redesigned Keiner Plaza yet.

I am! Wasn't sure what the park was called, Google Maps has like 3 different names. We visited last fall and it made me want to move to STL (Well, that and the potential of living in Lafayette Square).

Couldn't this be funded with parking revenue? At least the parking portion?

WoodDraw wrote:Couldn't this be funded with parking revenue? At least the parking portion?

It could be mostly funded this way for sure

With $10 per spot going to pay for it $70mm would require 639 people park 365 days per year for 30 years. That’s without financing costs too or adjusting for inflation.

I’ve seen less reasonable funding plans.

Presentation posted online: https://kansascity.uli.org/wp-content/u ... tation.pdf

Kinda off topic, but what in god's name is the big grey box on municipal's roof? Above and left of the north entrance

TheLastGentleman wrote:Kinda off topic, but what in god's name is the big grey box on municipal's roof? Above and left of the north entrance

It was part of the last renovation. It allows them to host Broadway touring shows.

DaveKCMO wrote:

TheLastGentleman wrote:Kinda off topic, but what in god's name is the big grey box on municipal's roof? Above and left of the north entrance

It was part of the last renovation. It allows them to host Broadway touring shows.

Interesting. Do you know its exact use?

fly space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_system

KCPowercat wrote:fly space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_system

I see. Thanks!

DaveKCMO wrote:Presentation posted online: https://kansascity.uli.org/wp-content/u ... tation.pdf

Do we really need a 15th (I hope this is an exaggeration) event space downtown?

flyingember wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:Presentation posted online: https://kansascity.uli.org/wp-content/u ... tation.pdf

Do we really need a 15th (I hope this is an exaggeration) event space downtown?

By the convention center? Yes.

Why are we building a garage for the next 100 years??? With Uber, Lyft, autonomous vehicles, this just doesn't seem like a good idea to drop $63 mill. I'm for Option 1 or Option 3. Option 3 allows us to at least repurpose an above ground parking structure. With Option 1 we will likely know in 15 years what need for a parking garage we really have and if that need has diminished then we can get rid of the garage entirely and do this properly.

cityscape wrote:Why are we building a garage for the next 100 years??? With Uber, Lyft, autonomous vehicles, this just doesn't seem like a good idea to drop $63 mill. I'm for Option 1 or Option 3. Option 3 allows us to at least repurpose an above ground parking structure. With Option 1 we will likely know in 15 years what need for a parking garage we really have and if that need has diminished then we can get rid of the garage entirely and do this properly.

Autonomous vehicles aren't going to drive around all day using up electricity. they'll be parked somewhere most of the time.

Autonomous taxi companies are going to over-buy vehicles because they need (in a business context) to serve peak use. So there's going to be an excess of cars most of the day.

In your context I would expect parking to turn over from private use to being leased by ride sharing companies resulting in more big garages and less single use lots, but it won't result in needing less parking for decades.

One interesting side effect would be a slowdown in traffic. Today most drivers turn into a parking lot to stop and the road is free flowing within context of traffic control. But with shared vehicles there will be more people using them as taxis and exiting at the curb. It could quickly get to the point that a majority of cars downtown are stopping midblock. Think of how the train blocks cars at each stop so there's a long line of cars behind it. Now imagine when everyone does this at thousands of locations downtown.

The best thing for downtown transit movement would be to mandate autonomous vehicles only let people out in parking garages and lots.

I think you're overestimating the number of autonomous vehicles that will be required. Think how many of our personal vehicles sit all day long while we work or stay home or sleep. When shared vehicles become more common place you'll need less supply for the demand and there will be less 'parked' vehicles overall. I think you'll also see people use vehicles less as more companies do door to door delivery

I think I read recently that the vast majority of personal cars are only used five percent of each day (or something like that).

http://fortune.com/2016/03/13/cars-park ... t-of-time/

FangKC wrote:I think I read recently that the vast majority of personal cars are only used five percent of each day (or something like that).

http://fortune.com/2016/03/13/cars-park ... t-of-time/

I wondered how that compared to a bus route.

Line 18 makes 60% utilization of the busses serving it. It looks like they need three busses at peak. That's not bad given it's shut down 30+ hours of the week

236 has much less service. But it needs three busses during peak due to timing. (I presume they send these busses to serve other lines, let's assume they don't for the sake of argument)
These three busses have 4% utilization.

So that 5% car utilization could actually beat bus utilization on some routes, though it's unlikely to be higher than the average of the transit system.

If car sharing triples car utilization it can easily compete with a bus system in terms of availability of service in less dense areas