To the Editor:
Michael Lee Pope’s “Parking the Guests”, although a mere news brief, puts in sharp relief the lies developers and their city hall allies peddle to the public under the “transit-oriented development” fad du jour. After having bought into dense development inappropriate for historically low-density neighborhoods on the grounds that the new residents “won’t need cars”, and accepted conditions denying on-street parking permits for the residents of these behemoth apartment buildings such as the Monarch, now that city hall has the dense development its developer friends want, it wants to renege on the quid-pro-quo which got these dense developments in the first place, figuring these behemoth buildings won’t be torn down just because their residents don’t want to abide by the conditions allowing them to be built in the first place which the residents accepted when they moved there.
Do, I wonder, the “transit-oriented development” cheerleaders realize how any relaxation of these parking restrictions undermines the credibility of their entire transit-oriented development approach for any future project anywhere in the city and maybe even region? Opponents will say: “You’re telling us this project won’t impact parking and that its residents won’t use cars, but look at the [fill-in-the-blank] which made the same promise, only to run to city hall a few years later to renege. How stupid do you developers and your city hall lackeys think we are to fall for this again?” Will Councilman Smedberg, who is pushing for this change, be willing to look them in the eye and answer, “Very”?
Dino Drudi
Alexandria