The Flint Parking Pattern

Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times has a great story about the paving over of American cities to create parking. Sound familiar, Flintoids? Pensacola, Florida has somehow snagged the naming rights to this unfortunate phenomena.

The Pensacola Parking Syndrome is a term of the trade used to describe a city that tears down its old buildings to create parking spaces to entice more people downtown, until people no longer want to go there because it has become an empty lot. Cities should let the free market handle the construction of new parking spaces. People who buy or rent new homes can pay extra if they want someplace to park a car. Municipalities can instead cap the maximum number of lots or the ratio of spaces to dwellings and offices.

I'm biased, but I think the Flint Parking Pattern (FPP) would have been more appropriate.

Thanks to Grumkin for passing this along.

Parking Chronicles: Using Meters to Pay Off Parking Decks

Are parking meters about to make a return to downtown Flint? The move allegedly could help pay off the pricey parking deck that few people seem to use.

Thanks to Earl the Anonymous for passing along this item.

Flint's Latest Parking Problem

Is downtown Flint's latest parking structure the son of AutoWorld. Columnist Andy Heller thinks so after Kristen Longley of The Flint Journal reported that Flint taxpayers "could be on the hook for payments on $10 million in loans for a downtown parking deck that now sits mostly empty."

"Less than six months after opening the James W. Rutherford Parking Structure, the Downtown Development Authority already is scrounging to make the first payment on the city-authorized bonds for construction of the parking ramp.

"The problem? The DDA expected to bring enough downtown tax revenue this year to cover the $620,000 payment, but instead is bringing in a tiny fraction of that — about $900."

Historical Parking Decks

Flint's seemingly never-ending quest for unnecessary parking spaces has unearthed a field stone wall that just might date back to the era when fur traders hung out downtown.

Before the Parking Lots

On a beautiful fall day in the fifties, Mary Fisher photographed the home of her grandfather, Frank D. Baker, who founded Baker Drugs in 1882 and also served as sheriff and postmaster at one time. The white house at 410 E. Third Street was in the heart of a leafy neighborhood near downtown. Jane Fisher, Mary's daughter, remembers her great-grandfather's house: "It had a massive front porch, and I remember a back staircase that had velvet curtains on either end so that it was completely dark in the stairwell. This house had a coal chute in the basement. It may have even had a Michigan basement, but I mostly remember the coal on the floor.

A view of tree-lined E. Third Street in the fifties.

The Baker house in 1973, shortly before it was torn down to make room for a parking lot.

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A satellite shot of E. Third Street today. The location of the Baker house is identified with a red marker. At least some of the trees are still there.