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Parking on a downward trend in Vancouver office buildings

January 31st, 2012 · 9 Comments

After I did a story recently on the drop in parking at downtown commercial garages and the less-than-expected increase at meters, a Toronto editor asked me to find out what was going on with office buildings.

As I discovered, the parking requirements are dropping there too. Not without some resistance, though. The resistance isn’t coming from the builders, who are delighted at every $20,000 to $50,000 parking stall they are able to eliminate from the building plans.

But sometimes the people leasing buildings, despite their best efforts, have a hard time convincing incoming clients that they don’t need a whack of parking stalls along with their office space. Those clients discover it themselves, as they find their company’s stalls sitting empty when it turns out the majority of their employees take the bus or train or SeaBus or bike or their feet to work.

In spite of that, though, the numbers are coming down.

On a personal note, I’m looking forward to seeing the new project that Graham McGarva talks about in this building, at Granville and Cordova. I worked across the street from that incredibly dumpy parking garage for 10 years and it will be great to see it replaced with a building that he is saying is going to be a small experiment in making an office building more playful and livable.

It’s going to be a bit of a bike-station centre for that area, if I understand correctly. Details to come.

 

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  • Roger Kemble

    I am not surprised . . .

    http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/1yorkshirelad/vancouver.re-boot/Vancouver.re-boot.html

    . . . quite unnoticed, until now, the epicenter of movement in the city is Mount Pleasant.

    Time for UBC and SFU to get on side (all future development at the epicenter) lest they start digging up Broadway, wasting countless billions on shiny trinkets we cannot afford, putting hundreds of enterprises along the route out of business (haven’t we been here before?).

    I am not at all enthusiastic about “<I . . . the new Richmond-to-Vancouver rapid-transit line built for the Olympics that has proven to be a huge hit with the downtown crowd.

    “Hit” with the YVR north shore crowd only as a “land-lift” besotted council salivates over more currency-hedging sprawl.

  • Joe Just Joe

    The proposed building replacing the Cordova/Granville parkade will be 32 storeys and is only calling for 135 stalls. So we will see an increased demand for stalls, plus once you remove all the stalls currently supplied there, we will see a net loss in supply as well. Similar story over at the Telus project. Our monthly parking rates have been on the cheaper side national, but we are now starting to see increases and it appears the upcoming office tower boom is going to add further upward pressures. Only at ~$50K a stall does it stop paying to build pay parking stalls, at $20K a developer will build as many as allowable as the return is there.

  • rf

    I think what Joe is missing is that it costs $20k/stall to build that first level of parking but jumps up by over 100% when you start going down further.

    I pay about $400/month for my spot around Dunsmuir and Hornby. It’s a steep price but a luxury I just haven’t been able to give up yet (even though I live less than a block from a Canada line station on both side).

    But I think the property owner is only seeing around $200 of that (after management fees and the component that is taxes).

    The city is giving up a lot of potential tax revenue when there is less parking. But it’s a choice they have conciously made in hope of reducing congestion (which has it’s own costs).

    What keeps me off the Canada line (unless drinking after work…) and paying an extra $280 (net)/month for parking…

    Honestly….
    1. I’m at work early enough that it’s about 10 minutes faster to drive. Cambie is wide open at that hour.

    2. There’s no Starbucks to pick up a coffee in Pacific Centre before 6am without a 10 minute detour (that’s one full snooze on the alarm).

    3. It’s a sardine can riding home at 4-6pm (albeit 15 minutes faster).

    4. There’s something ‘decompressing’ about the alone time driving home (although slow) before a toddler ambush when getting home.

    Not the greatest reasons but if the difference was $500/month I’d probably switch, buy an umbrella, and put a Nespresso machine in my office.

  • Bill Lee

    The parking-less Vancity developed building on Cordova and Abbott will open soon. (One of the fastest approve-and-build projects I’ve noticed. Someone was running with the ball/hammer/trowel on the double)
    Dreadful DPC radio adverts for the closing of the Parking garage on Pender across from Pendera, VCC, Sun Tower in February. Not the largest parking set downtown, but sizeable.

  • MB

    @ rf #3

    Item 2 … there’s a Caffe Artigiano on the east side of Granville between Dunsmuir and Pender, and another a couple of doors from the SE corner of Hastings x Howe. There’s another one on Hornby across from the VAG, but that one is consistently crowded. Not sure of their opening times, but I find their coffee is better than Starbucks.

    Can’t realy advise on your other points.

  • MB

    @ Roger #1

    My experience with the Canada Line during its 22-month construction was hellish. But now I find it very convenenient. It saves me at least $17 in cab fare to / from the airport, and I’ve been very impressed with its frequency and quality of service, even during rush hour despite the packed cars.

    Moreover, if the decision makers side with a Broadway-UBC subway I don’t think the public would stand for the cut ‘n cover engineering method from the Dark Ages. They will also demand more planning goes into designing the system to meet tomorrow’s demand.

    I also see all the bugbears about cost, mode, construction disruption etc not really detracting from overall public support for a project that will serve the region for a century.

    Moreover, with the public attraction to frequency, speed and lower operating costs of a subway (especially one that is superior to the Canada Line), I can foresee a move to ease the burden of underground parking costs from retail, institutional office and residential development within 500m of Broadway as more people rely on transit and less overall expenditures are devoted to exclusive real estate for cars.

    Vancouver land is too expensive for such low grade uses.

  • Guest

    Any idea what’s going in at that Pender parkade site?

  • spartikus

    $20k/stall to build that first level of parking but jumps up by over 100% when you start going down further.

    [Whistles] Filed in the memory banks.

  • The Other David

    The bowed cement floors always looked dodgy to me. Not a place to be when The Big One hits.

    The Cordova/Granville Parkade. then and now http://changingvancouver.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/cordova-from-granville/

    and future, with daycare on 32nd floor. http://changingcitybook.com/2012/01/30/320-granville-street/