Speaking of parking and mixed-use in highly used places

Baltimore's Inner Harbor from Rash Field. Photo by Roger Millman from Kit Ehrman.

There is a park on the Inner Harbor called Rash Field that is used for a variety of things including volleyball. The demand for parking in the Inner Harbor area is high and the city wants to build a parking structure there. However, they recognize the value of the park, and therefore insist that the parking structure be built underground, and that the park be restored above. From "Garage planned for Rash Field," in the Baltimore Sun:

Inner Harbor's Rash Field, once home to an ice skating rink and now a playground for barefoot beach volleyball players and soaring trapeze students, might soon be transformed again - with a parking garage beneath it.The preliminary plan, which might endanger the two attractions, is to be presented to Mayor Martin O'Malley and community and business leaders this month. It would involve elevating the field enough to build a one- or two-level parking structure underneath, holding 400 to 500 cars...

Rash Field would be restored atop the garage when construction is complete. City officials said that views of the harbor would not be obstructed. "People would just drive by this and see a park and a skyline," said Andrew Frank, executive vice president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's economic development agency. But neither Frank nor an O'Malley spokesman would say whether the trapeze school or the volleyball beach would return.

It's important to make the right decisions on such matters, because we live for decades with the results.

Jason McDonald (right) of Canton spikes the ball during a beach volleyball game at Rash Field in the Inner Harbor. A winter ice rink was maintained by the city on the field for a decade but was removed in 2003. (Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam) Jun 13, 2006.

Index Keywords: parking; mixed-use