Parking lots are cash cows, but downtown Detroit need so many?

BY KIRK PINHO

e city that put the world on wheels now has the dubious distinction of having among the highest percentage of its downtown dedicated to places to park cars.

A study by a Portland-based advocacy group called Parking Reform nds that 30 percent of downtown Detroit is devoted to parking spaces, making it one of the cities with the most of what urban planners would describe as underutilized land in the country.

at percentage — which counts things like surface parking lots and parking decks, although not underground parking — puts Detroit in front of other Midwestern cities like Columbus, Ohio (27%); Cleveland (26%), Chicago (4%), Indianapolis (25%), Minneapolis (18%), St. Louis (21%) and St. Paul, Minn. (16%).

What’s more is that only a handful of cities nationwide have a greater percentage than Detroit: Mesa, Ariz. (32%); Riverside, Calif. (34%); Lubbock, Texas (35%); Las Vegas (42%); and Arlington, Texas (42%), according to Parking Reform data.

Ranking high in this area doesn’t bode well for Detroit or those other cities, said Je Horner, an associate professor of urban studies at Wayne State University. at’s because surface parking, in particular, frays downtowns and destroys character, among other things, he says.

“A city is a collection of density that almost by de nition needs to be walkable in order to retain the character of being a city,” Horner said.

But for owners of surface parking lots in particular, parting ways with their real estate can be a di cult proposition for one reason: With little overhead, they are cash cows. The Detroit Free Press in 2018 estimated that privately owned surface parking lot owners generated $175 million in revenue, based on an estimate of $10 per space per day, ve days per week, with some 67,000 surface parking spaces.

Some of the big parking lot and parking structure owners include the Ilitch family’s Olympia Development of Michigan, Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC, General Motors Co. and Park Rite Inc. ere are also plenty of smaller operators.

Some developers have razed buildings in recent years to make way for what they contend is needed parking to sell or rent out residential units, including Fort Shelby condominiums on West Fort Street and the former United Artists Building on Bagley.

To be sure, some other surface parking has been developed since then — or is proposed to be developed in the years ahead, with visions ranging from o ce to residential space. And some of Detroit’s downtown parking have other uses on top, including e Griswold apartments on top of a Michigan Avenue parking deck and o ce space on the top oors of the new Huntington Bank building, which has bottom oors of parking.

But in a geographically large city and region still largely reliant on the automobile due to a public transportation infrastructure that many users and observers nd lacking, parking remains a necessity.

“ e percentage of land devoted to parking in Detroit is higher than average because public transit options have historically been limited and our city’s economy centers around the production (and ownership) of vehicles,” said Kevin Bopp, the CEO of Park Rite. “So, the number of parking spaces evolved to meet demand, which suggests there isn’t a meaningful oversupply.”

Bopp says he supports doing whatever creates the best version of the city, but that doesn’t necessarily require removing parking space.

A lot of lots

A study by an advocacy group called Parking Reform nds that some 30 percent of downtown Detroit is surface parking lots and parking garages, putting the city among those with the highest percentage of its central business district land used for those purposes.

“As land use continues to shift and transit improves, some parking supply will naturally be absorbed. I don’t think anything should be done to forcibly e ect change,” he said. “It would be better to continue promoting the healthiest, most vibrant urban core possible.” ey can be traced to the emergence of the automobile as a primary form of transportation in the 20th century, white ight and declining population within city limits since 1950, dampened land values, freeway construction, property owners letting buildings rot and requiring demolition and any number of other factors.

But still, the Parking Reform study buttresses the narrative that at least some areas of Detroit’s central business district remain dominated by surface parking and other car-centered uses, even as the city for years has attempted to add density with new buildings downtown and elsewhere to varying degrees of success.

“For a city the size of Detroit, as well as its metro, it’s doing very, very poorly,” said omas Carpenito, who worked on the study for Parking Reform.

He said that following World War II, suburban sprawl became prominent as highways were constructed — destroying Black and Brown neighborhoods not just in Detroit, but in other cities — and a orded people the ability to live farther away from their places of employment.

“( is was) the whole idea of the commuter city where you have a big lawn in the suburbs, you commute in and the city is only for your o ce job, you leave and you’re done. at sort of mixed-use (environment) that we saw before World War II was then seen as obsolete,” Carpenito said.

For downtown Detroit, the reasons for the vast amount of parking are varied and complex.

“ ere’s a huge capitalist impulse

SOURCE: PARKING REFORM that derives from all of that and that’s lower land valuations, which leads to lesser desired land uses, including lots of parking and lots of mom-andpop operations that can capitalize on that,” Horner said. e end result, regardless, is a downtown — generally de ned here as between the freeways and south to the waterfront — pocked with surface parking, parking decks both new and old and land that is otherwise underutilized.

“If you bring in the things that make cities more densi ed, more walkable, if you bring in public transit and so forth, then the land valuations will rise enough to drive out those undesirable land uses, and the same thing is true for surface parking,” Horner said.

For Bryan Boyer, assistant professor of practice in architecture and the director of the bachelor of science in urban technology program at the University of Michigan, the prevalence of parking in Detroit is representative of how the region has failed on transit issues.

“It’s one of those face-palm mo- ments,” Boyer said. “How many ways do we need to be reminded that not only the city of Detroit, but Southeast Michigan, is going to be held back until we have public transit.

“If we can’t get people moving around the region any other way than cars, this map — which is de nitely a map of the past — is also going to become the map of the future,” Boyer said, referring to the Parking Reform map showing swaths of parking space.

For urban planners, land that’s undeveloped or used as surface parking is generally seen as a missed opportunity to add density to a city, making it more vibrant with more restaurants, bars, apartments, o ces, entertainment and other uses.

“ e goal shouldn’t be to remake every block in the city so that you could come and park super easily, right,” Carpenito said. “It should be to remake our culture. It should be for us to ask whether cities should be built like this.”

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB