Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Scoop! of Nothing: New Garage Is Empty, As Predicted in Alameda Daily Noose

Remember, you read it here first! The prediction that the new multi-million dollar parking garage on Oak Street would be too big appeared over a month ago in these very pages. And as you can clearly see from the exclusive Alameda Daily Noose photo above, the prediction was dead on; no-one is parking in the garage, and no-one ever will. The City might as well board it up, or knock it down. It would have made much more sense to create ten new free parking spaces right in front of each business in the neighborhood, because no-one wants to walk a block just to get coffee and a sandwich, or buy furniture, and no-one wants to pay for parking.

Now the nattering nabobs of negativism will be quick to point out that there isn't room to put in all those parking spaces right in front of each business, but the great minds here at the Alameda Daily Noose city planning think tank have the answer: We simply tear down all the buildings and rebuild them far enough back from the street to allow convenient free parking right in front, just like at the Seven-Eleven.

Of course, if there are houses or other buildings behind the first row of buildings, we may have to tear them down and move them back a bit, too, repeating the process until we reach the shoreline, where we can simply reconstruct the final row of houses on sturdy piers standing in the water. Problem solved!

Although this plan might sound just a bit extreme at first blush, all Right-Thinking Alamedans know that a business without plenty of free parking right in front of the door is not a business worth patronizing. Sometimes you have to destroy a downtown in order to save it!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Who wants to park in a garage when you can spend extra coffee-sipping time circling the blocks looking for a parking spot?

Nice predicting, but peeps at the city predicted it too. That's why they raised rates on the street and stepped up enforcement on the streets (supposedly).

Plus the evil drug store next door doesn't enforce parking in their free lot right next door to the garage. So why not park there for free, and fake shop in the evil drug store for a second just to take advantage of the free parking?