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[quote=Anonymous][quote]
Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is truly maddening behavior by drivers. They will circle, they will park in a bus stop/bike lane/fire hydrant zone, throw on their flashers in a travel lane for thirty minutes when a free or cheap garage is right there to use.

What is even going through their heads? Do they not know about the garage?
[/quote]

One of the reasons people avoid underground garages is a safety concern, particularly for women.  This is somewhat silly in Bethesda---even though there has been the occasional mugging but is a real concern in DC with respect to people parking in underground garages.  The redevelopment of the downtown DC area in the way envisioned by Jodie McLean/Nina Alpert and Deborah Ratner Salzburg---the task force assembled by the Mayor when it looked like Monumental was leaving---is not bad in concept but it will take a long time for the market to get there.  The existing commercial office buildings sitting 75% vacant are going to have to have huge declines in values, foreclosures and then reselling to developers willing to take on redevelopment.  Out of every 10 office buildings, probably only 1 is really suitable physically for cost-effective conversion---the rest of the buildings have to be scraped and then rebuilt completely.  There is also a millennial demographic bulge which works against this as the millennials renting the small but expensive apartments at 14th & U are now moving into "family formation" age where they want to get married, get more space, etc.  They aren't going to stay downtown.  So as a developer who is evaluating whether to buy a foreclosed office building, scrape it completely (demolition costs are not insignificant), and rebuild it to residential, I need to be able to convince a lender in this high interest rate environment that there is enough potential revenue at the end of the day to justify making a loan.   That means I need to charge high residential rents when the depth of that market is questionable.  [/quote]

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