Comments on: First Class Redevelopment Opportunities

By: frank@nycgarden

frank@nycgarden — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:00:35 +0000

Use the governmental power to begin removing parking lots. Do this slowly so its barely noticed at first. The process should take decades. Structure roads to diminish speed, accessibility, and quantity. Those with cars may think twice about buying a new one as the parking and accessibility diminishes. Build practical, attractive alternatives to car travel. Offer dedicated bike lanes and walking right-of-ways. Cars and trucks are useful, we don’t want to rule them out completely. But we need to take away their entitlement to urban space privileges.

But if you take away the post office parking lot in a neighborhood with all its cars, all you’ll get is an angry mob.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:07:58 +0000

@4
Yea whoever had the bright idea to move the public floor of the University Station Post office down to the basement should be flogged.

Rather than infill in their parking lot I’d rather see some greenspace or other usable public space.

By: alexjonlin

alexjonlin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:17:57 +0000

That’s Wedgwood (no e).

By: Joshua Daniel Franklin

Joshua Daniel Franklin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:44:41 +0000

I like the idea of moving sorting and vehicle parking off-site. The University Station post office (on the Ave at 43rd) is a beautiful Art Deco building with WPA murals on the first floor, but that floor is only used for sorting. The public area is in the basement. There would also be some opportunity for infill in their small parking lot (some of their vehicles are parked a block away at the UWPA garage attached to the University Manor apts).

By: Neighborhood Voter

Neighborhood Voter — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:16:40 +0000

You can look up the property ownerships on the KC Assessor’s web site. Some of our P.O.’s are privately owned and leased to the agency.

By: jbb

jbb — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:00:37 +0000

My understanding is that the big impediments to this are: the need by the post office for parking not only for employees and customers, but for their various mail delivery vehicles; and the need for specialized build-outs to accomodate sorting machines and whatever else they have, which make it hard to fit into a multi-tenant structure.

I’d love to see these two sites redeveloped, but anyway, during the RE bust, the P.O. makes a pretty good landbanker – at least they’re not vacant lots.

By: JoshMahar

JoshMahar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:56:36 +0000

Last year USPS actually did start a process to redevelop the Broadway Post Office. The owner of land wanted to do a deal with SCCC to put some student housing on the site with the Post Office underneath. They had one community forum about it last May (sadly a big issue was better parking for employees and customers). But the Great Recession has now put the plan on hold.

http://blog.capitolhillseattle.com/2009/05/12/broadway-post-office-changes-on-hold-as-development-mulled