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Parking on a downward trend in Vancouver office buildings

January 31st, 2012 · 9 Comments

After I did a story recently on the drop in parking at downtown commercial garages and the less-than-expected increase at meters, a Toronto editor asked me to find out what was going on with office buildings.

As I discovered, the parking requirements are dropping there too. Not without some resistance, though. The resistance isn’t coming from the builders, who are delighted at every $20,000 to $50,000 parking stall they are able to eliminate from the building plans.

But sometimes the people leasing buildings, despite their best efforts, have a hard time convincing incoming clients that they don’t need a whack of parking stalls along with their office space. Those clients discover it themselves, as they find their company’s stalls sitting empty when it turns out the majority of their employees take the bus or train or SeaBus or bike or their feet to work.

In spite of that, though, the numbers are coming down.

On a personal note, I’m looking forward to seeing the new project that Graham McGarva talks about in this building, at Granville and Cordova. I worked across the street from that incredibly dumpy parking garage for 10 years and it will be great to see it replaced with a building that he is saying is going to be a small experiment in making an office building more playful and livable.

It’s going to be a bit of a bike-station centre for that area, if I understand correctly. Details to come.

 

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