Parking in Mid-City needs a boost
Tear down the Reeves Center, please. Give the Mid-City Business District community what it wants and needs: PARKING.
There’s a mayoral race in Washington, DC this year. It’s a fierce competition and no one is clearly out in front as the leader for the Democratic ticket – that’s where all of the competition is. I haven’t made a choice on who I’ll vote for in the primary this September. But I will vote. And I’d like to vote for someone who recognizes an issue that is important to me: parking
Not having enough parking interferes with my business. Parking is the major restraint on the growth of my business. Everyday people from Virginia, Maryland, and DC don’t come to CakeLove or Love Café because they’re certain there parking won’t be available. Most of the parking around CakeLove and Love Café is off-street and it fills up fairly quickly. The solution is to eliminate the perception that there is inadequate parking. Only then will people change their attitude that access to retail, nightlife, dining and services in this neighborhood is real.
How do we get there? Build a parking garage. Tear down the Reeves center at 14th & U St. NW and build a new anchor – a municipal parking structure that’ll hold 1,500 cars. Give this community what it wants and needs: PARKING. The Reeves center fulfilled its mission as an anchor for re-development on the U Street corridor. It signaled the direction for change and now we’ve turned a new corner. Development is fully on track and the needs for that space and the community are different. What the current and future businesses and residents need more than a partially occupied municipal center with closed and redundant storefronts is a lot of parking spaces. The Reeves center is obsolete.
Of course there are essential city services and tenants with enforceable lease terms currently in the Reeves center. But can’t a structure be developed with parking AND any of the tenants that want to or need to return? A future without a plan for parking is an invitation to more restraints on growth. It just doesn’t make sense.
Hundreds of new residents and legions of visiting friends and families will need regular access to parking. All of the new retail on U Street will need parking for their customers or the businesses will be strangled. Off-street and designated residential parking below the condos going up all around U Street just don’t meet the need.
For a real example of how we can make things right, just look at the model of our neighbor, Montgomery county. They’re sucking sales tax revenue from the District of Columbia because they’ve built wisely with planned growth. CakeLove Silver Spring store sales are almost entirely supported by customers who park in the public garages. And it costs no more than $5.50 for 10 hours of parking. If you’re in and out in 2 hours it’s under $2.00. I’ll even drive there for errands simply because I know where I can park and it feels faster. I don’t have the mental real estate to deal with “where am I going to park?” I want that burden removed from my customers who come to CakeLove U St. or Love Café.
Parking is a real problem. I talk about it all of the time with other small business owners. Our growth is capped by the limited capacity of parking on U Street. A parking garage with 1,500 spaces is a solution.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:12 am
While YOUR store might benefit from parking, DC officials have the whole neighborhood to consider. For example, a large number of U St businesses make their money by selling alcohol. Encouraging drinkers to drive to U St bars, rather than take advantage of some of the best public transit in the world, literally would be criminal.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:42 am
Why don’t you encourage your customers to use public transportation. I don’t think the COMMUNITY wants suburban drivers clogging their streets and polluting their air.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:08 am
Parking is the last thing this neighborhood needs. We need to make streets safer and more accessible to pedestrians, buses, and cyclists, so that people aren’t in their cars as much and pedestrian traffic can expand without fear of speeding vehicles, and our city can free itself of pollution and congestion. You build a 1,500 space garage, our streets become even more clogged with traffic, which in turn will increase demands for better (read: wider) roads, which will turn 14th or U into a highway. Heck, the only reason you have a store on U street is because neighbors who were here generations before you and I successfully stopped U Street from becoming an expressway. This is why sidewalks are so narrow in our neighborhood; for a while, they were torn up in preparation for construction.
We already put up with the demands of small business owners (particularly restaurants) who want to use our streets for valet parking. That’s enough. If you advocate for increased performance parking , then you’d have the neighborhood behind you. If you can’t drum up business without the extra foot-traffic you think cars will bring (they won’t), perhaps its time you improved on your product.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:19 am
You make an excellent case for why parking is so essential to growth … including smart growth. And your pointing to Montgomery County as a good example to follow can be used to show the doubtful ones how essential parking is to be able to service the needs of all of our citizens and not just a fringe group. Public transit serves a need, but definitely not for all of us at all times. Personal transportation with its flexibility serves a far larger proportion of the population a far larger amount of the time. And the people it serves are those more likely to avail themselves of services such as Cake Loves. The demographics of those who prefer to rely on mass transit … and think that people only come to 14th and U to ‘go to bars’ aren’t necessarily the ones who would spend $100 on a cake anyways … They can buy a lot of beer and peanuts for that kind of moulah … and probably would.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:48 am
The area around you is very walkable and has great access to public transportation. Suggesting that the Reeve Center should be torn down and replaced with a 1,500 car parking garage is both short-sighted and indicative of a lack of understanding of what makes a commercial area succesful. The parking garage at 14th and Irving in Columbia Heights is close by and never approaches full capacity. Advocating for shuttle service connecting Columbia Heights and U Street would be a far wiser position.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:04 am
Gee, more cars in DC. Just what we need. Maybe people who can’t devote the “mental real estate” to figure out that public transportation takes them RIGHT TO U STREET should just stay in the suburbs.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Every interesting city in the world worth a damn has had a “parking problem”. Parking in mid-city does NOT need a boost. Every square foot of land you dedicate to parking is a square foot where nobody can live, work of shop. The more parking we have, the emptier our city will be of people. If your customers wanted to live in the suburbs surrounded by cars and parking lots, they’d live in the suburbs rather than mid-city.
By advocating emptying out the neighborhood of people and replacing it with parking, you are advocating hurting our city. The more you do so, the less I will feel compelled to give you my money.
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:35 am
I’m just reading your blog post now. While I see your concern for providing space for people to get to your business, I think you’re looking at the wrong side of it. As a resident in this area, the last thing needed is city-subsidized parking (I would also question whether the current parking at Reeves is even fully utilized.)
In any case, what I would support is more bike parking and more pedestrian space. Things like turning 15th Street two-way, widening sidewalks (e.g. not only to make it easier to walk around but I would frequent Cakelove more if it had a nice sidewalk cafe).
I hope that you would choose to support these items, which, aside from whatever way you feel, are far more politically possible than tearing down Reeves.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 am
Horrible, horrible idea. What DC needs is less cars, not more. As a neighborhood business, you should be encouraging and lobbying for better, more efficient public transportation. If you want more customers in the area, support an expanded Metro, which can carry them there in a more efficient, healthy manner.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 am
If you want your customers to have easy access to parking, move your store and cafe to Cleveland Park.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
You’ve got this way, way wrong Warren. There’s a Metro station and a handful of bus lines that stop just blocks from your businesses. The city should not be in the business of encouraging more people to drive in, contributing to congestion and pollution. It should be working toward getting people out of their cars and onto mass transit. I know you sell cakes that can be difficult to transport, but maybe you should just think about relocating to someplace where you can lease a parking lot for your customers as well — how about a nice strip mall in Virginia? U Street is a pedestrian-friendly urban corridor. You may want parking, but the community does not, trust me.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
A good idea to swamp the neighborhood with traffic from all over the region, while located two blocks away from the U Street Metro? Really? Because what U Street really needs is clearly more cars. Let’s narrow the sidewalks while we’re at it and put it angled parking so we can get a few more cars in. (What’s that, Adams Morgan is doing the opposite as we speak? But How Will People Get There Without Parking Spaces?)
I jest somewhat, but it’s beyond alarming that someone who benefits so much from what makes the neighborhood successful (ie, a focus on place, walkability, people, and pretty much anything but cars) can be so adamant about 1,500 parking spots. I hear there are about 1,000 up in Columbia Heights that the DCUSA developers/owners “needed” so badly, yet have gone unused since day one. Perhaps a move is in order? Cake Love could have its very own parking level there!
I’m sorry, but this is one of the more shocking things I’ve read all day.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I’m with Dan and Tom. The last thing I want when eating a $7 cupcake is the scent of car fumes wafting all over me.