lots of parking is fine, as long as its inconvenient. if its easier to walk and bike and take transit, people will do it. building suburban-style seas of parking that you have to walk across to get to a building is BAD, condos with lots of underground/adjacent parking can be good as long as it doesn’t have to be walked-around all the time, increasing travel times to walk to the neighboring properties

“An attorney by training, prior to joining NYCEDC, Seth was an associate at the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in the Real Estate practice. Before law school, Seth was a financial analyst at the Mergers & Acquisitions boutique, James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated.

Seth is a graduate of Columbia College, where he majored in Ancient History, and Harvard Law School.”

http://www.nycedc.com/AboutUs/WhoWeAre/PresidentBio/Pages/PresidentsBio.aspx

Perhaps this pinhead would like to pay a visit to Macy’s in Herald Square and ask the shoppers pouring out of the subway and into the front door whether they’d prefer to see the store surrounded by a giant parking lot.

The Active Design Guidelines statement is that auto travel should be reduced “particularly when walking, bicycling, and public transit are convenient alternatives.” Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn are perceived to be walkable and transit rich already. The rest of the outer boroughs are not — despite very low car ownership rates in much of the city. That’s why these EDC projects in these parts of the city are so pedestrian-hostile. The South Bronx may be as easy to walk and bike and offer as much transit as Park Slope, but “transportation culture” is very different. There’s a perception (and maybe a reality) that many/most people in the South Bronx would rather be driving if they had the money to own a car (and possibly rather be living in another neighborhood altogether).

I think it’s more about location than specific agency. Is the 911 Call Center in the Bronx an EDC project? It’s slated to be a suburban office park because it’s in the Bronx, where city policy seems to continue to promote auto use, and culture links cars to affluence and “success.”

The strength of NYC is its density, low car use and abundance of destinations. Subsidizing car oriented retail like Gateway in the BX or East River Plaza (among many) plays against the city’s strengths and shows a profound obtuseness as to why NYC is a great place to live and do business. EDC and some folk at City Planning believe that affluent New Yorkers are attracted to an NYC that offers more suburban amenities, including parking. This belies the fact that the most expensive parts of the city are those which are least car oriented. The EDC should stop subsidizing retail at highway off-ramps and start thinking strategically about what kind of growth is desirable. It’s abominable that this agency is actually given the power to steer business growth. It, and most IDA’s probably do more harm than good. Lowering taxes by the amount EDC wastes on corporate subsidies would probably create far more jobs.

Good point about Macy’s Herald Square or in fact all of 5th Avenue.

According to Seth Pinsky’s logic all these stores should be failing.

I bet he drives everywhere in NYC.

What JK #10 said. Exactly. EDC is trying to promote growth in NYC by fighting against the very strengths that make NYC an attractive place!

By the way, I keep walking through the cavernous empty garage at the Gateway Center pushing my granny cart filled with stuff I bought in there. It’s very easy and convenient … because there are no cars to contend with. So, thanks for the walkway, EDC.

“Traffic” means:

1. people coming and going via any means,
2. motor vehicle use,
3. problematically high levels of vehicle use (congestion)

The first is a good thing, particularly for a mall. We’re saying that planning for traffic (2) reduces traffic (1) to the mall. I say we need a word for 2. that doesn’t also mean 1.

Seth Pinsky has fallen into to the Robert Moses syndrome. Sitting comfortably in his chauffeured car, he thinks he know what the world wants, but only from his point of view. No one can tell him what is wrong with his ideas, because he already knows what is right.

Who are the EDC? Where did they come from? Who appointed them? And why?

(For that matter, what about the LMDC and the ESDC and the rest pseudo-semi-crypto-agencies)

Instead of persuading or “reforming” the EDC, we need to eliminate it. All I see them doing is milking tax payer money while confounding and convoluting the channels of communication and accountability between us and traditional government agencies.

Put these public sector parasites like Pinsky out of work. I’m sure a wunderkind like him will find plenty work soon enough elsewhere.

Mr. Bloomberg, tear down this wall of parked cars!

The thing with the Gateway Center is it needed the parking to attract the tenants. The people at Target think they need parking, they don’t understand New York. In terms of parking need in general there is a “Goldilocks Principle” to it. You want neither too much nor too little. The Gateway Center is on the Papa Bear end of that (to exploit my metaphor) but there would be no porridge at all if Goldilocks had got her way.

It’s not the parking, it’s how it’s laid out. Surrounding a place with parking makes it a mall that must be approached by car. Moving the parking to a garage (with or without a fee) or in back can be only marginally less convenient, but allow a much more attractive street wall with better access for non-drivers. And drivers are all non-drivers once they park and get out.

I find it amusing to see “fitness” places at the back of a huge parking lot, with no walkways or any other way to get in other than walking through the parking aisles. What’s wrong with walking to the gym? Why not have the gym in front and the parking behind?