$34.5 million in Unneeded Parking Ramps for Benderson/Bass Pro

The Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Inner Harbor Project (since renamed the Erie Canal Harbor project), issued in 1999, contains a parking inventory summary. It found 11,009 off-street parking spaces within 1,500 feet of the Canal District. Further, those closest to the Canal District had the lowest usage in a mid-day workday survey: an extremely low 17%. This is because of all the parking built for the HSBC Arena, which gets used to capacity only during concerts and hockey games. Summer weekends and evenings, the expected peak time of demand for the Canal District, finds these spaces virtually empty.

Why then does ECHDC want to build no less than 2,400 parking spaces in four parking ramps at public expense for the free use of Benderson Development and Bass Pro? One of the ramps is planned withing the Canal District itself, called by ECHDC, without irony, the "Historic Block."