Have you ever seen a flat parking lot in the downtown of a US city?
Low property tax (because it's unimproved) plus real estate speculation.
Low property tax (because it's unimproved) plus real estate speculation.
Putting in a 10 to 25+ million dollar multiple level parking garage can pay off, but only if there is enough demand for it and you can get zoning permission.
That doesn’t mean building a multi level parking garage in that same space is actually a good investment because demand isn’t unlimited. What you see as wasted space can therefore actually be a highly efficient business.
Put another way if building a 5 story building would be obviously more profitable then they would do that but the opportunity costs is now 1+ million per year you aren’t getting from the parking business.
You can unquestionably have smaller lots, but it’s hardly a massive plot of land.
Also, an acre with parking attendants doubles the number of cars so they could be clearing close to 2 million before expenses, and attendants aren’t that expensive.
It’s far more profitable to charge people 20$ to use 1/300th of an acre for a few hours than to actually do nothing with it. Which means the opportunity cost to build something is higher.
Unless the building is going to clearly be wildly profitable it may be better to stick with a parking lot.
Houston.
It's cheaper than an actual building...
> and it does make the land more useful.
...and less useful than one, too.
You want people hailing from further distances via public transit and rail, and you want the majority of the businesses in an area servicing a highly dense, local community that can all walk there within 10-15 minutes.
This enzyme must be removed, the American Urban Body reworked to reject suburban thinking like this.