Love it! That's the best I've ever seen.

Knowing how WASPy Portland is, though, most residents in that complex own cars and pay for monthly parking, but take the streetcar to avoid having to walk anywhere and complain that the buses and MAX interfere with their ability to drive a car in the city...

I would guess that this development would have had a lot more parking if it weren't in a transit-rich area. Some parking is always necessary, but having transit nearby can really cut down on the amount (as long as cities don't stupidly require minimum amounts of parking).

Just look at the apartments out in Beaverton or Vancouver. The parking lots take up as much land as the buildings.

Good for people who can pay 2x the normal rate I guess.

Parking has it's purpose. It keeps people from parking where they should not.

This is what happens when there's not enough parking for most TODs.

John Charles went out and talked to people at the Center Commons.
http://cascadepolicy.org/pdf/env/P_1019.htm

More here http://bojack.org/2011/05/voice_of_rebel_on_tape_says_he.html

"I live on NE Hoyt, a block from the Center Commons, and can report that little has changed in the nearly 10 years since John Charles detailed the project's pie-in-the-sky assumptions about transit use and parking needs. With inadequate parking built into the project, our narrow street is a parking lot for Commons residents and visitors (in addition to MAX riders). I can live with it during the day, but with cars coming and going at all hours of the night, accompanied often by powerful sound systems blaring and people shouting and carousing, it sucks. Posted by Pete | May 3, 2011 2:23 PM "

"Yes, before Center Commons was built it was the old DMV site, used daily as an informal park-n-ride for MAX. There were typically 50 or more cars parked there by 9:00 a.m. Once PDC determined that Center Commons would get built, one of the bureaucrats put surveys under the windshield wipers of parked cars for a few days to find out where these people came from and what they would do after the free parking was gone. As part of my research on that project, I looked through all the actual answers submitted to PDC. Virtually everyone told PDC that they drove between 2 and 10 miles to get there, and that if the parking was taken away they would either stop using MAX, or invade the nearby residential neighborhood and park on local streets. None of them said, "OK, I'll just leave my car at home and walk to MAX."

So PDC knew what was going to happen through the densification process, and then deliberately under-built parking on Center Commons as well which then spilled even more parking problems into adjacent neighborhoods.

This is what Portland planners refer to as "improving livability."

And BTW, I'm confident JK is not hiding out there because he's too young to live in the senior wing, not poor enough to live in the subsidized apartment wing, and his car is way too big to fit into any of the "mini-me" parking spaces.
John Charles Posted by John A. Charles Jr. | May 3, 2011 5:04 PM "