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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just wanted to note that La Cosecha has a large parking garage underneath it where you can park for free for the first three hours. It is also used as overflow parking for Union Market.

Every large building being built in the Union Market area has a parking garage, there is zero reason to rely on street parking there. Eventually they'll get rid of the lot at UM to build another building there (with underground parking). Also eventually none of the parking in that neighborhood will be free unless you are shopping at Trader Joe's.

This is how urban development works.[/quote]
Surface parking lots and then above ground garages are more highly preferred than underground garages from a consumer standpoint. All of the surface lots at Pike and Rose fill first before the garages. In downtown Bethesda, the above ground lots fill before the underground lots which never fill. People will circle the garage in Bethesda Row for 15 minutes and not even consider parking in the underground garage just around the corner that has 700 spaces. [/quote]

It doesn't matter. Pike and Rose is in the suburbs. Surface lots are incredibly inefficient in the urban core and surface lots don't last. The surface lot at Union Market will be eliminated in the next few years. It's not even well maintained now -- it's nothing like the lots at Pike and Rose which were built to last a long time.

The developers who are building up Union Market are going to force all the parking underground because it allows them to put up buildings with street level retail and then high rise apartments, greatly increasing the value of the lot. Also, since the build up of the neighborhood involves so many apartments, the development is building in a customer base that does not even need a car, on top of the people who live nearby in NoMa. None of those people are going to drive to Union Market. These are people who bought there specifically so they could walk to all the amenities.

Development in the city and in the suburbs operates differently. Eventually it will be close to impossible to park in Union Market, and when you do, it will cost a lot of money, just like in Navy Yard or the Wharf. And suburbanites will complain. And no one will care because the neighborhood will have enough well off residents to sustain business there, and people from outside the city will just have to suck it up and pay a premium for underground parking, or use public transportation. And many of you will, because you actually like these destinations and they offer a lot more than anything you have in the burbs. Even at a place like Pike and Rose or the Mosaic District, which ultimately are just facsimiles of what the city offers. Sorry.[/quote]

Hm. The ratio of 28 yr olds without kids or a mortgage relative to the rest of the adults in DC and the close suburbs is lopsided in favor of the latter. Spoiler alert - the group that doesn’t live in the micro apartments has more disposable income.

But, feel free to push the vision that the younger, carless renters alone can sustain the kind of CRE conversion needed in downtown DC[/quote]

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