Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
Brent Toderian likes to start Twitter hashtags that revolve around city building. One of his most recent is #LookWhatFitsInAParkingLot. For this one, he asked the Twittersphere to consider the things we love in cities that might fit inside a parking lot.
Venice, Amsterdam, and Shibuya (Tokyo) were all overlaid — at the same scale — on the surface parking surrounding Dodger Stadium. There are about 16,000 parking spaces, which actually take up more land than the stadium itself.
To be fair, I bet if you overlaid parts of Los Angeles on this same parking, it would look similarly astounding. But that shouldn’t change what you take away from this post: parking is very land consumptive.
A regular of this blog recently suggested (in the comments) that I take a look at the London-based design firm ZED Factory. ZED stands for Zero Energy Development.
The first project that caught my attention was ZED Pod. ZED Pod is a small, low cost energy efficient modular home that is designed to sit atop of surface parking lots. In other words, it’s a way to repurpose under-utilized surface parking without compromising existing parking ratios. All you really need are the air rights. And since the “land” is cheaper, the homes can be cheaper. They can also be easily relocated if the parking lot were to get developed in the future (though they are designed as permanent structures).
In some ways, there is something perverse about the way that driving and parking have such a profound impact on the urban landscape. Even when it’s buried underground and hidden from sight, the structural column grid needed to layout efficient parking will often carry up through the building impacting suite layouts. We’ll even restrict housing supply when parking requirements can’t be met. Should it be parking or people who come first?
But cars aren’t going away. And ZED Pod is a clever way of dealing with an existing urban condition – however suboptimal it may be. I found the concept interesting and I thought you all might as well.
The property sits at the southeast corner of Adelaide Street West and Duncan Street (shown above), and includes an existing 61,911 square foot (GLA) office building, 36 surface parking spots, and a laneway (it was specifically called out in the press release).
The plan is to restore the existing heritage building, as well as build additional retail space, office space, and rental apartments. Given the nature of this site and the team behind it, I have high hopes that it will end up a remarkable development project.
It’s interesting to see the continuing interest in rental apartments here in Toronto – which is something I’ve written about before. Up until recently, the development community had almost zero interest in purpose built rental apartment buildings. Now they’re coming back in fashion.
But the other piece that’s interesting to me is the laneway. Below is a photo from Google streetview, showing what I believe is the laneway that the press release is referring to.
As many of you know, I’m involved in a non-profit here in Toronto called The Laneway Project (advisory role only). We want to transform Toronto’s underutilized laneways. And this strikes me as a perfect opportunity to do something really exciting at the corner of Adelaide and Duncan in the Entertainment District.
So if the new owners have any interest in things that are exciting, I would encourage them to get in touch with me or one of the founders of The Laneway Project.
Tonight I finally got the opportunity to visit the Stockyards retail center at the corner of St. Clair West and Weston Road in Toronto. It’s a 550,000 square foot complex that was only recently completed. The major anchor tenant is Target and it just so happens to be the first new construction Target in Canada.
What’s interesting about the Stockyards development is that it’s a reinvention of the suburban big box store format that we all know so well. You know, the big store surrounded by a sea of parking. And from my past experience working on projects similar to this one, I can tell you that the Stockyards project is generally loved by planners at the city.
So what’s the big deal?
Let’s first look at how it would work for a traditional big box store development. Assume you’re a developer and you’re trying to secure a 150,000 square foot big box store tenant for your site.
Historically, in order for that tenant to even consider signing with you, you’d need to be able to offer her a single level format. In other words, her 150,000 square feet needs to be all on one level. Multiple levels are more expensive to build and they add another layer of complexity when it comes to shopping carts, back of house loading, and so on.
On top of this, she’s going to have onerous parking requirements. It wouldn’t be unheard of for her to ask–or demand–for 3.5 parking stalls per 1,000 square feet of rentable area. If you do the math in this example (150,000 / 1,000 x 3.5), you get 525 parking spots. This number usually exceeds any of the parking requirements that your local municipality might have. And historically, it has always been surface parking. So forget about building a parking garage and don’t even waste a second thinking about underground parking. That’s way too expensive.
Finally, the tenant will want her building oriented in such a way that the entrance is directly in front of the largest possible number of parking stalls. Usually this means that the front of the building is facing inward, away from the street, and the rear of the building is facing outward towards the rest of the city. If you could provide all of this and the demographics in your catchment radius were favorable for her business, you’d be in a pretty good position to sign a deal.
The problem with this format is that most cities don’t want it anymore. It goes against everything that most progressive cities are trying to promote in terms of walkable and transit-oriented communities. Large surface parking lots don’t make for great cities and neither do introverted buildings. At the same time, land values are getting to a point where developers need to use their land more intensively. Big surface parking lots just aren’t the highest and best use.
So how then do you make big box retailing work?
That’s where the Stockyards comes in. What they’ve done is put smaller retailers along the perimeter of the site with direct access from the sidewalk; they’ve buried the parking in the middle of the site (and built structured parking); and they’ve moved the anchor and larger tenants (Target, Winners, etc.) to the second floor. I don’t think that all big box stores would go for this, but Target is known to be one of the more progressive in this regard.
So functionally, if you’re taking transit and walking along the street, you have shops engaging you and you’re not looking at the loading area of some big box store. And if you happen to be driving–as many people do to big box stores–you can either drive in and park on the ground floor (and then take an escalator up) or you can drive up the second floor parking area and walk right into the store as you normally would. What they’ve basically done is adapted big box stores to a more urban context.
Now, I can see why many at the city like this development and I certainly think it’s a step in the right direction in terms of getting both developers and tenants to think more urban. But I wouldn’t say that we’ve nailed the formula here. When I was there the space felt empty and I had trouble orienting myself after I parked. But it’s certainly a major improvement compared to the big box stores across the street.
If you’ve had a chance to visit the Stockyards, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
