filed under Adorablism | Downtown
Save The Arnold
2:52PM ON
10/02/2009
BY
Beth Comery
David Brussat had a wonderful column in the ProJo yesterday about the sweet little Arnold Building on Washington Street (the shallowest building downtown) which suffered a fire last month. Apparently the damage wasn’t too terrible and there is hope that it can be saved, and not turned into another parking lot. His larger point is a good one, that “Parking lots are assassins of downtown.”
Buildings surrounded by parking lots tend to have down-market tenants. The more that a downtown’s buildings have been replaced by parking lots, the easier it is to find parking — and the harder it is to find a reason to park.
He’s exactly right. I go downtown frequently, night and day, and I have never not found a parking space eventually; and often right away and very near my target. The people who say they never go downtown because there’s no parking never go anywhere anyway. And there is so parking.
October 3rd, 2009 at 3:21PM
Ken M Says:
Agreed! Actually, I’d like to see Providence go in the direction of Evanston, IL and other mid-sized cities and build a couple of city-operated parking garages downtown (or take over a couple of the privately-operated garages).
Evanston garages are clean, well-lit, and inexpensive. This encourages people to come downtown and patronize local businesses. It also encourages people to drive into downtown, park, and take public transit. All of this is possible when parking costs a couple of bucks - vs. the insane rates charged by local garages.
Having cheap, safe garage parking also allows reduction of parking meters (though Evanston has not gone that route). That widens the streets for bike and pedestrian traffic AND reduces auto congestion. It’s very much a win-win situation. Only the current private garage operators lose!
We need to protect our architecture. We also need to bring more people downtown to live, shop, and visit. Turning some surface lots into attractive garages is a good place to start. There is enough land for parking in Downcity Providence without tearing down existing buildings. Some good urban planning would help tremendously around here!
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October 9th, 2009 at 3:01PM
John Barber - Steel buildings Says:
I sell steel buildings and for the most part a steel building in and of itself is not attractive, however, I have seen some of our customers transform their buildings into master pieces and 1 customer in North Dakota actually created a home from one
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