The first parking garages were sometimes converted stables, sometimes other large buildings adapted for new use and sometimes built for the purpose (by auto clubs that worked to defend drivers against the entrenched horse-and-buggy partisans). Early automobiles were not all-weather vehicles — engines could freeze and exposed leather seats needed special care — so early garages were heated and protected from the elements. They were, in general, much better integrated into the urban fabric than garages built decades later.
With the 1930s, when cars no longer needed to be protected from the elements and architectural style became more austere, garages got much worse. They became more strictly functional and unbelievably ugly: squat, towering, rectilinear buildings with open sides, showing cars like rows of bad teeth. All too often, especially as cars proliferated garages were plunked into the urban landscape, breaking up neighborhoods, dwarfing (or supplanting) historic buildings, cutting people off from views they once took for granted.
The parking garage is a large, imposing, desolate and often stark structure. Parking garages it could be argued are a necessity, essential to our fundamental American right to mobility in an urbanized world. The challenge is to build them better.
Yes, they can be built better than they have been (they can intersect with mass transit, they can be hidden underground or disguised behind better facades). But until the economics of urban land use and the demand for huge amounts of parking change, they can never really be made beautiful. They are almost always too large to be successfully hidden and, rather like funeral parlors, no matter how nice they are on the outside, you always know what’s on the inside. In the case of garages, it’s hundreds of little environmental disasters that burden their owners with debt, insulate them from society, frazzle them with constant cleaning and maintenance and pollute a crowded world.
If you hate garages — for being town killers, for ruining neighborhoods, for discouraging mass transit — there is no such thing as a good garage.
Should we work toward their obsolescence and elimination (retained only for shared cars, buses, electric vehicles, etc.)? That is a trenchant, hard-nosed but ultimately more rational choice than the blithe acceptance of them as necessary evils that just need a little tweaking. Banishing the garage would force some social engineering on a population that desperately needs to wean itself from a planet-killing addiction to the automobile. When a neighborhood becomes a parking nightmare, one of two things must happen: People stop going there, or they get there on foot, bicycle, train or bus. Residents of crowded Georgetown might well consider both options entirely positive.
The parking garage is an enabler for an auto-dependent society. The anger and hostility against them that has grown up among committed urbanists is a good thing. The Winfield Village board finds beauty in their parking garage plans and maybe they have some sensible suggestions on how to improve their new favorite building type. But in a better world, we would enjoy their occasional beauty with nostalgic hindsight, in books researched and illustrated, or after they’ve been converted to lofts or torn down altogether.
8 Responses to Will Blight Be Built in Winfield?
60190 on April 27, 2011 8:00 am at 8:00 am (Edit)
Great article! I’m really praying now that Tony, Tim and Jim are on the village board that Birutis’ ridiculous idea of putting a 4 story UGLY parking garage on the north side of tracks is DOA!
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Patti on April 27, 2011 8:41 am at 8:41 am (Edit)
Please no! We don’t need a parking garage, especially on the north side across from the CDH parking garage. Our tiny village will look like one big garage, plus it’s a waste of time for village employees to pursue grants, etc. when the village has much bigger fish to fry.
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Inquiry on April 27, 2011 9:33 am at 9:33 am (Edit)
I have to believe Birutis’ reckless and uncontrolled spending ways are over with Tony, Tim, and Jim Hughes on board. Over paying tens of thousands of taxpayer’s dollars for house to make Birutis’ “pipe dream” a reality falls squarely in the incompetent file.
Fortunately now we have board members who will speak up and not let Birutis take the village on a one way ride to insolvency.
Read: http://winfield411.com/magazine/2011/02/06/winfield-village-board-will-over-pay-for-property/
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LeRoy Budnik on April 27, 2011 11:03 am at 11:03 am (Edit)
Time to think out of the box. Need for Garage/Cost for Garage/Alternative to the Garage. We drive cards to the train to get there on time, to avoid weather issues, to have some freedom of direction after returning home. Tim provided numbers that show it to be a loss (although we also know that CDH is in need of parking). From a data perspective, how many people board per train/time period? Would this justify a neighborhood shuttle at a lower loss or possibly break even?
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Zack Clark on April 27, 2011 11:28 am at 11:28 am (Edit)
The entire idea of parking garage is absurd. Who is going to want to live next to this monstrosity? This administration should be named the fire, ready, aim group. If the goal is to bring more people to the downtown area why did they take out the condo building at Shelburne Crossings? I know the argument everyone will make the real estate market is flat on its back. But real estate is cyclical and will be back again. Birutis sold out the future for short-term gain. If the condo building were still in and the Winfield Fuel property would be developed with mixed use residential and commercial applications our downtown could thrive. Not to mention all the money we wouldn’t have to spend on an obnoxious and imposing parking garage.
PS: We shouldn’t be worried about CDH’s parking they take care of themselves all too well. We have our own needs!
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RedRider on April 27, 2011 2:26 pm at 2:26 pm (Edit)
Is there a parking crisis in Winfield? I must have missed it. At last check 40% of Winfield’s parking lots are empty. Has the village board ran a P&L on the parking garage?
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Trends on April 27, 2011 3:33 pm at 3:33 pm (Edit)
I support development of the property but I have some concerns about the village board’s development concepts as related to the Town Center Development Plan.
A parking garage “could hinder future urban style development.” The Winfield Town Center Plan recommends as an option mixed-use with residential along with ground-floor retail on the site. The Plan does not refer to a parking structure as an option for the residential component.
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Mike W on April 27, 2011 6:53 pm at 6:53 pm (Edit)
This is a spectacularly bad idea. With an operating deficit at almost $1 million dollars a year, (Numbers taken from the Winfield Word Road Referendum Special Edition) Winfield should not use scarce public funds to subsidize driving. IDOT puts the cost for above-ground structured parking at $26,000 per space.
The village board could help struggling downtown businesses by allowing greater density in the area around the Metra station. Moderate-sized residential buildings line Winfield Road north and south of the R/R tracks, but Jewell Road is almost entirely just one and two story buildings, with the exception of CDH of course. Building 2-3 levels of new residential units with a retail component would bring new residents to the downtown, especially immediately next to the Metra Station, thus adding more built-in customers to the Town Center.