Parking

We hate to pile on more bad news today, but these tipster-submitted photos of the Brooklyn Ikea grand opening bear witness to the onslaught of traffic about to engulf Red Hook. Apparently, the cars queuing up for cheaply-constructed furniture are stretching the store's 1,400 parking spaces to the max (which would explain why Ikea thought it necessary to annex the old Revere Sugar refinery lot next door). Judging from this anecdotal evidence, Red Hook will not only be subject to the 17,000 car trips projected for peak days, but most of those vehicles will be of the huge, extra-cargo-hauling variety.

Earlier this week, the Times real estate section profiled the developer-architect team behind East River Plaza, a big box retail outlet in East Harlem that will include 1,248 parking spaces when it opens next year. In the piece, we learn that the project's designer, an Atlanta-based Home Depot specialist called GreenbergFarrow, is responsible for other parking-rich shopping centers throughout the city, including Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market (pictured above), Rego Park Mall II, and the Red Hook Ikea.

From Clinton Hill Blog via Gothamist:

Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell's Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York's most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer's request to build a 400-car public garage as part of a mixed-use project at 310-328 West 38th Street. Only 232 parking spaces would have been allowed without the special permit.

Brad Aaron files this report from Athens, Georgia. 

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

Chinatown, December 2007: As good as it gets?

DOT plans for Chrystie Street would replace parking with bike lanes.

Our regular babysitter Laura, an R train commuter, is out of town this week. Nicole, the woman providing us with back-up nanny service for our 1-year-old, travels to our house, in Park Slope, in a mini-van. This morning she noted, quite happily, that there was so little traffic on her way from Ocean Parkway that she was trying to figure out what holiday it must be.