KCRag Forum

aknowledgeableperson wrote:

kboish wrote:

aknowledgeableperson wrote: KC Live???????

....is part of an office and housing development. Not a stand alone development

It is a stand alone in that the buildings housing the bars is separate from the office and housing.

you're missing the point again. as usual.

I got the point, just don't agree with it.

Big difference.

Thinking you got the point and getting the point.

Big difference.

grovester wrote:Thinking you got the point and getting the point.

Big difference.

Shots fired.

The thing that seems riskiest about this baseball village is that the entertainment/retail aspects are tied to the success of the team. I'd think that a Royalsesque stretch of putridness would spell trouble for the development. I understand that the Cardinals have a strong brand, but they're also having a very strong stretch of years.

http://fox2now.com/2013/07/17/cardinals ... r-than-kc/

Oh no, Ballparking Village is going to put P&L to shame.

KCtoBrooklyn wrote:http://fox2now.com/2013/07/17/cardinals ... r-than-kc/

Oh no, Ballparking Village is going to put P&L to shame.

My favorite part of the article stating that BPV will be better than P&L (although this just references the KC Live section of P&L):

K.C.’s development has 16 restaurants, clubs and bars in the live district. Ballpark Village will have about half as many, but three of them are huge.

Those comments by Ed Golterman are all over the place, downplaying any kind of downtown STL progress unless it ties to his Kiel/Muny ideas. He's a debbie downer gadfly on steroids.

kcjak wrote:

KCtoBrooklyn wrote:http://fox2now.com/2013/07/17/cardinals ... r-than-kc/

Oh no, Ballparking Village is going to put P&L to shame.

My favorite part of the article stating that BPV will be better than P&L (although this just references the KC Live section of P&L):

K.C.’s development has 16 restaurants, clubs and bars in the live district. Ballpark Village will have about half as many, but three of them are huge.

By my count, there are ~34 restaurants, clubs, and bars in the entire district proper, not including the outdoor spaces, the Jones, or the grocery store. I think around 7 of those are local (8 if you include Z Strike as local).

earthling wrote:Those comments by Ed Golterman are all over the place, downplaying any kind of downtown STL progress unless it ties to his Kiel/Muny ideas. He's a debbie downer gadfly on steroids.

Golterman is a real nutcase.

KCtoBrooklyn wrote:http://fox2now.com/2013/07/17/cardinals ... r-than-kc/

Oh no, Ballparking Village is going to put P&L to shame.

I'm pretty sure you and other people in Kansas City made that whole link and website up as a farce because I have been assured repeatedly via the internet that no one in St Louis cares really about KC or even knows it's there, actually, and certainly never engages in any kind of rivalry or competition, not even the harmless media variety, because rivals and competitors are, you know, kind of peers...

The Power and Light District has a see through roof with and heaters and fans. St. Louis will do better with a retractable roof. K.C. just got a new video screen last year. The one at ballpark village will be twice as big.

Is this where we all start comparing weiners? Because I...

DeWitt added, “At the end of the day my fingerprints will be on it in terms of strategic design approach.” Scattered around DeWitt’s office are evidence of the project, his work boots and a hard hat. There are plans for the museum on the floor and artist conceptions cover the wall.

Never mind, DeWitt wins.

The Post-Dispatch does some soul searching on "CarPark" Village and parking downtown in general. They're having a lot of the same discussions we're having over here about parking in general. KC may be paying out quite a bit on P&L to cover the bonds, but at least we're not subsidizing "temporary" surface parking lots that charge $20/spot on game day.

The team’s announcement earlier this month that it was opening 400 new surface parking spaces across much of the 10-acre site next to Busch Stadium was met with hoots of derision — think “CarPark Village” — from some city backers. One, Alderman Scott Ogilvie, charged that the heavily subsidized project on prime real estate should be held to a higher standard.

“We’re trying to build a successful, vibrant downtown,” Ogilvie said. “These things are not defined by how much surface parking they have. They’re defined by people, by density, by walkable experiences.”

Aside: I would love for KC to have a Scott Ogilvie on the city council. One of the positives of St. Louis having an overly large aldermanic board...

There are roughly 43,000 public spots in garages and surface lots downtown, according to the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, though many condo and office buildings have their own private garages. In addition, there are nearly 3,300 street parking meters. All this in an area where perhaps 70,000 people work each day and about 13,500 live.

“Generally speaking, we’ve got more spaces than we need,” said Bob Lewis, a principal at urban planning consulting firm Development Strategies. “It doesn’t help to add more.”

And yet the perception, say downtown boosters and developers, is that parking can be a hassle downtown. It can be a barrier to entry, said Missy Kelley, spokeswoman for the Partnership.

Where have we heard this before?

In the short run, said Ogilvie, the Cardinals will be collecting $700,000 a year in parking revenue — more once construction ends next spring on Phase One and 300 more spots open up — cash the team won’t get if the site is under construction. And the city has no legal ability to push them to build more, despite giving Ballpark Village $17 million in state and local tax incentives.

“We shouldn’t be subsidizing low-quality design and low-paying jobs, and today that’s what Ballpark Village is,” Ogilvie said. “Where’s the public benefit in that?”

PLEASE MOVE TO KANSAS CITY WHEN YOUR TERMS ARE UP, MR. OGILVIE.

How Too Much Parking Strangled the Motor City

39.2 percent of the land in downtown Detroit has been paved over or built up for the purposes of parking. There are surface lots across the street from each other, parking garages around nearly every corner, more than 5,000 spaces alone within the half mile around Comerica Park.

...

"This is definitely a self-perpetuating cycle in which you sort of drain the vibrancy out of an area by adding more parking," Linn says, "which then makes the area seem unsafe, which makes you feel a little more uncomfortable in the space, which makes you add more parking."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commut ... city/6585/

Google aerial of downtown Detroit:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=detroit+ ... n&t=h&z=15

Two stadiums downtown plus an arena could be a cause.

But what is interesting is the title to the article. It ignored the problem of what caused the conversion to parking lots in the first place. Maybe the land had more value as a place to park cars than to have a building on it. And more likely a building that was vacant or near vacant.

Doubtful that the stadiums caused that. Tiger Stadium was downtown for decades and held 13,000 more people than Comerica, which sits nearby. Until Ford Field was built in 2002, the Lions played in the suburbs. I'd bet the parking went in after the Tigers arrived and before the Lions.

I don't know if that land had more value as a parking lot, but it's definitely cheaper to maintain a surface lot. If you're a building owner who can come up with the demo costs, surface parking means never having to give a crap again. And that's not counting the people who buy up buildings specifically to make them surface lots because theyre almost all profit with no maintenance or tenants to worry about. Does that mean the building had less value than a parking lot? Depends on who you ask and the time frame you're considering.

Does that mean the building had less value than a parking lot? Depends on who you ask and the time frame you're considering.

How long do you expect most owners to sit on a building that is producing little to no income and at the same time you have to pay for taxes on the building plus utilities, insurance, maintenance, and so on? At the same time there are other nearby properties nearby in the same shape. In other words it is a money losing piece of property with no end in sight. I do have an option. I can demolish the building, pave the land, and open a parking lot and now the money losing piece of property is now producing a profit for me.

So, yes, the building has less value than a parking lot. If the demand returns for that lot to be used as a building site I or someone else I sell the property to can build to meet that demand, probably in less time, and maybe cost, than it would take to rehab the older structure.

Doubtful that the stadiums caused that. Tiger Stadium was downtown for decades

Look at the surface lots around the baseball field. Doubtful those were there with the old Tiger Stadium, especially since the old stadium wasn't in the neighborhood of the new stadium.

aknowledgeableperson wrote:How long do you expect most owners to sit on a building that is producing little to no income and at the same time you have to pay for taxes on the building plus utilities, insurance, maintenance, and so on? At the same time there are other nearby properties nearby in the same shape. In other words it is a money losing piece of property with no end in sight. I do have an option. I can demolish the building, pave the land, and open a parking lot and now the money losing piece of property is now producing a profit for me.

Point is, value isn't absolute. And you're assuming a lot of things in that statement. Not all surface parking is an expression of market forces because the risk is to a property owner is nil if you overestimate parking demand and only make a fraction of what you expected. Unless you really did something dumb, you'll eventually make money on the parking lots.

aknowledgeableperson wrote:So, yes, the building has less value than a parking lot. If the demand returns for that lot to be used as a building site I or someone else I sell the property to can build to meet that demand, probably in less time, and maybe cost, than it would take to rehab the older structure.

Bullshit. New buildings take an enormous amount of time and capital. Old commercial buildings can offer an easy path back for a neighborhood because the cost to get a small business or whatever in there can be very low. No way that places like the Crossroads happen if someone had paved it over and we were sitting around waiting on the market to decide it's worthwhile to build there again.

IMO you're also overestimating the willingness of a surface lot owner to sell. If you owned a surface lot in a redeveloping neighborhood, would you sell the lot or rake in every dollar that you could, for as long as you could? I know what I'd do. It makes more sense to hold the lot for as long as possible, let scarcity drive the asking price up, and be one of the last properties to sell to a developer.

aknowledgeableperson wrote: Look at the surface lots around the baseball field. Doubtful those were there with the old Tiger Stadium, especially since the old stadium wasn't in the neighborhood of the new stadium.

Google Earth only goes back to 1999, but all of the parking around Comerica and Ford Field now is there then. The steel for Comerica is barely out of the ground. There's no Ford Field at all. It's not definitive because we can't get back to before stadium construction, but the lots already have stripes and worn paths in the drive aisles. They don't look new. What's striking is how little has changed in that area besides those two buildings.

Old commercial buildings can offer an easy path back for a neighborhood because the cost to get a small business or whatever in there can be very low. No way that places like the Crossroads happen if someone had paved it over and we were sitting around waiting on the market to decide it's worthwhile to build there again.

IMO you're also overestimating the willingness of a surface lot owner to sell. If you owned a surface lot in a redeveloping neighborhood, would you sell the lot or rake in every dollar that you could, for as long as you could? I know what I'd do. It makes more sense to hold the lot for as long as possible, let scarcity drive the asking price up, and be one of the last properties to sell to a developer.

Yes, it depends on the type of building one is talking about. The Crossroads is quite a different neighborhood, building-wise, than what is inside the loop. At the same time an old building may not be easily convertible to an usage desired by a tenant.

And, yes, a willingness to sell varies by owner. That surface lot downtown is not different than an undeveloped tract of land in the suburbs that has development surrounding it. But the owner holding on IMO is more of an exception than the rule. But, I think, for the most part it is an owner that can make more money operating a parking lot than either selling the property or building a structure on it.

Ballpark Village and Detroit are perfect examples of why we need to have a land value tax instead of taxing property. It seems so backwards that people/corporations can just sit on mountains of land with little risk while they wait for something to develop. If these empty lots were taxed higher Capitol would be built on them right away and most of our cities wouldn't look like parking lots.

If these empty lots were taxed higher Capitol would be built on them right away and most of our cities wouldn't look like parking lots.

You build the buildings but who would occupy them? There already is plenty of vacant space, just want to add more and depress rents?