More on parking decks

Hillary dissents on the parking deck ...

Um, the potential parking rate increases to $2.50 an hour downtown? The ugliness of the design? The fact that it doesn't do much to minimize the scale? The increase in costs by $5 million at a time when construction costs have overwhelmingly decreased? The misleading nature of the renderings? The granting of the commercial rights to the developer? Do you want me to keep going?

We might be talking around each other here because there seems to be a disconnect between criticism over the process related to the parking deck (i.e. parking fees, construction costs) and the broader, more philosophical skepticism against a big, mixed-use building being put in the downtown area. The process questions can - and will - be resolved in some form or fashion as the Athens-Clarke County Commission discusses this issue in further detail. I don't like the $2.50 an hour parking fee proposal or the increase in the cost of building the development, but those are things that will probably be amended as this moves along.

Those philosophical ones, however, are beneath the surface and cropping up throughout this discussion. A lot of folks like Athens-Clarke County the way it is, and that's fine, but, personally, I don't think that's a feasible strategy in the long-term for a community that will see its population swell to roughly 150,000 people in the next 20 years.

I concede that you can possibly make some bigger buildings not look 'as big' ... though, to be honest, I'm hard-pressed to think of how you achieve that. I'm not saying it's not possible, but sometimes a bigger building means exactly that.

Either things like increasing density or Transferable Development Rights are just talk for the sake of talking, or they actually mean something for the community. If they're just talk, then that's fine too ... but let's at least be honest about it and recognize that the population will spill over into the suburbs, more neighborhoods will get developed, more roads will grow congested with traffic and more greenspace will be lost.