What’s cool is that the red brick facade will be facing 2nd Ave, a compromise made with the Roosevelt Neighborhood Committee, to have 2-story townhouses complement the adjacent homes. The taller segment behind it is actually the parking structure screened by faux windows and brickwork. It’s pretty convincing!

I agree, I really appreciate how McKinley and Basecamp try to hide the garage by blending the facade from the residential levels to make it feel more integrated and less obtrusive. Most of the other recent towers, Link/Derby/Kenect/Society/Aspire/Astra, all essentially just have a screened box sitting above the commercial space with a residential tower with a completely different material on top of that. I personally hope that hidden garage trend continues.

This was awesome! Thank you!

I had no idea there were more renderings of First McKinley. Those were neat.

Also, there was a highrise proposal for a parcel in the Warehouse district? I did not know that either!

I really hate the whole floating tower trend of podium parking. Sure it adds some more height and floors but to the car, which I feel is giving the wrong impression of who our downtown is for. Drivers or pedestrians.

On a side note, is anyone else impressed with how quickly the ASU innovation dorm is shaping up?

Unfortunately that is the reality here. It is extremely expensive to go below ground in this environment and there just aren't enough jobs downtown still to support a truly walkable environment. Add the heat on top of that and I think the reality is we will always require parking for buildings downtown. I'm just happy they are podiums now and not entire blocks of garages. We seemed to have been able to reverse that trend now.

....and Phoenix is the largest city in the country. Even if you live mainly downtown day to day, traveling anywhere in the valley requires a car. I am not sure why some don't like parking levels. When done correctly, they often add a different texture to a building's look. Also, if you have ground level retail, especially a bar or other loud business, the parking levels create a sound barrier to the upper living floors.

I’ve tried to explain this in previous discussions, but the message doesn’t seem to get through. I’ll beat my head against the wall one more time and try to explain:

First, it’s simply not true that “traveling anywhere in the valley requires a car.” For someone who lives downtown, it’s possible to shop for groceries, mail a package, or visit a doctor via walking or public transit. For those trips that do require a car, an occasional rental or rideshare trip can be more cost-effective than owning a car.

Second, when we endlessly repeat the myth that a car is needed to live in Phoenix, we send up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are told they need a car, so they make sure to have one. Once the cost has been sunk in owning a car, they want to use it as much as possible to obtain a return on investment. If, on the other hand, we stop assuming a car is required for everyday life, then people can sort out on their own when they do and do not actually need a car.

In terms of architecture, I suppose a few parking podiums (podia?) might be executed well enough to add distinctiveness to a building, but they’re the exceptions. Most are butt ugly, and their entrances and exits create yet more curb cubs to degrade the pedestrian experience at street level. For the residents, if the parking is bundled into rent, then everyone pays more for housing, whether they need or want a car.

If Phoenix wants to move forward to the next level of urban vitality, it should abandon all parking minimums within the light rail corridor and allow market forces to determine the optimal amount of parking and how it is priced.

And this just in...

The FAA appears to have reversed their decision (or corrected it) for Astra's height and Astra is now not deemed an adverse hazard with an approved height of 541'. :cheers:

https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external...27951249&row=0

I understand what you are saying but you are putting the cart WAYYY to far in front of the horse. Even Chicago has tons of parking in the city like this. You're talking about VERY rare situations like New York and San Francisco that fit your Utopian vision. It's not reality and never will be here because:

1) As gymratmanaz said, this is just too big of a land area (New York City and San Francisco are much smaller land areas)
2) Only in the densest of dense center is it possible to not have car
3) There is neither enough jobs nor diversity of jobs downtown for most people to live and work there
4) If you can't live and work in an area you need a FANTASTIC rail transport system

The ingredients of what you are looking for to create the utopian urban environment don't and won't ever exist here. So incremental progress is the way, with reduced parking and some building without. But by calling for eliminating parking you'll actually suck all of the oxygen out of the progress that's been made and Phoenix will suffocate. It's about balance my friend. Over time that will shift to more urban.

I‘ve never called for eliminating parking. I’ve called for eliminating parking minimums mandated by city governments. Let the market decide. If you are right and I’m hopelessly naive, then the parking will get built anyway.

There is a handful of people who would be willing to make the necessary concessions to live car-free in this city. It's not NY and it's not Chicago. It CAN be done but it's not easy or convenient.

This will be a car oriented city, even downtown, for the remainder of the existence of the automobile. Time to accept that and move on.

It doesn’t take more than a small percentage when we’re talking about a metropolitan area of 4.5 million. If Cul de Sac in Tempe can do it, so can a few places in downtown Phoenix. Alas, we will never, ever agree on this subject, and the more I hear the same cliches repeated over and over without question, the more I will dig in my heels and continue to advocate for something better. As you say, time to accept that and move on.

That's fair.

I don't believe a city with no underground trains, no density, and 6 months of 100+ degree heat will ever work for a car-free lifestyle for all but a very, very small portion of the population.

I agree with all of you to some degree.

If I was not married and did not have kids, it would be quite doable for me to not own a car. I already bike to work, to friends and for small errands (for me it's mostly because I love biking). I bike in the heat or the cold, and I have appropriate gear to adapt to most weather and situations. I am fortunate enough to live and work close enough to light rail to make it usable for me, especially if I bring a bike along for the last mile. All this from suburban Mesa.

Being married with kids, however, I am not able or willing to take the steps that would be necessary to live totally without private car ownership. But we do make it work with 1 car, which I still see as a point of pride.

I think the reality is not that most people can't go car-free, it's just that they don't want to, and I don't really blame them. It's understandable that not everyone wants to make the compromises with their time, hygiene and/or freedom/adaptability that are required to live here without owning a car. I think at least part of what a lot of people are saying is that it will probably never be the case in Phoenix that it's EASIER not to own a car than it is to own a car--as with the rare American examples of New York and maybe parts of San Francisco.

That's why I ultimately agree with exit2left that the best urbanistas can advocate for in Phoenix is to eliminate as much as possible the potential barriers to car-free living (such as mandatory parking minimums) and then let developers find the people willing/able to live car free if they're out there.

"That's why I ultimately agree with exit2left that the best urbanistas can advocate for in Phoenix is to eliminate as much as possible the potential barriers to car-free living (such as mandatory parking minimums) and then let developers find the people willing/able to live car free if they're out there."

Here's the thing though, and I know that nobody wants to hear this, it takes a very specific developer and situation to tolerate that idea. Most are going to look at it as shooting themselves in the foot. Having no parking available shrinks your potential tenant/buyer pool down to nearly nothing.

Your situation sounds similar to mine. We have one car for the family. My wife has primary custody of it because her workplace is in a suburban location. During the week, I am content to rely on my bicycle and public transit, but I sometimes use the car on weekends. If I were single and child-free, the most likely demographic to rent downtown, I’d seriously consider not owning a car and renting one for occasional needs. I would not have even contemplated that when I lived downtown 30 years ago, but enough progress has been made in three decades that the idea would be a plausible one today.

For the millionth time, this is not about “no parking.” It’s about letting market forces determine how much parking is actually needed and how it is sold. Cul de Sac is going to be an outlier for a long time, but it should not be unthinkable for a project to have unbundled parking with a reduced ratio of dwelling units to parking spaces. The developers and situations may be very specific, but they’re the ones the city should be cultivating right now. If that doesn’t work out, no harm is done. Everyone will still get their precious parking and skeptics can say “told ya so” as loudly as possible.

I sold my car when I moved to the center of San Francisco and after moving to San Jose where everything is car oriented I realized I just don't like driving enough to buy another one.

I don't live in the best of areas where I could walk to everything but I can get nearly everything delivered and I have a grocery store and CVS down the street. Downtown is a mile away and I can easily walk there, but with the pandemic everything is closed and I'm staying home for many reasons.

If you plan your life to be car free you can easily do it. The ubers I take are much less than insurance and payments.

The problem with eliminating parking requirements is that neighbors hate it when people in new developments park around the building, because, you know, they own public space. It delays projects but if a developer wants to lose money on a building and have a toxic asset with cheap rents that's not anyone else's problem.

... and yeah, if I had kids I probably wouldn't be living downtown and would definitely need a car. This is a completely different demographic than the young people that would live downtown and are moving here for the job boom.

I understand your stance and I agree with you that it would be nice to get people out of cars and onto light rail, bicycles, and on foot. I'm not debating that.

Put yourself in the shoes of a developer who has 15 sources of cash (all of whom expect a certain return) to the your apartment building off the ground. Would you build something with limited, extremely limited, or absent of parking? I doubt you would but maybe I can be surprised. I will not be sticking my tongue out saying "I told you so" if someone tries the experiment and fails. I will feel bad for them like I feel bad for anyone who tries something they believe in and fails.

I don't know. I'm not a developer, and I'm not in a position to tell developers what to do. In fact, I'm urging the opposite. Cities need to stop telling developers how much parking to build.

Okay, I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying your position. I can understand your reasoning for eliminating parking minimums. Interesting idea, the argument is that the free market will drive demand and building will build parking if their residents demand it or if there is money to be made because the demand for parking exceeds the supply. I'm a free market person 100%, interesting idea, but not 100% bought in due to reasons like event surges if developers who don't initially build parking will face bad repercussions down the road when their buildings become empty. I just wonder... if then this will result in more developers building mega garages because they can profit from them. I'd prefer most buildings have their own parking due to this potentially driving towards mega garages. The land is becoming expensive, so if money is to be made by selling parking to others, these garages are most efficient when they are MASSIVE when you're paying for expensive land.

Alot of rambling, I see your point thought. I see both sides of the coin.