Something’s (not) happening here: The end of the parkade as we know it

From Michael Alexander:

It’s one thing to drop your downtown parkade rates to the lowest seen in years– $10 all day, $8 on the roof, $5 all evening and weekends. But are parkade managers getting desperate when they pay someone to hawk two hours for $6?

That’s the picture at Seymour and Pender. According to VanMap, the four street spaces on that block of Seymour cost $5 an hour. A block south, 12 more street spaces cost $4 an hour.

So what does this say about the need for parkades?  And the need for the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts to hustle cars in and out of the downtown?  (The need to transport goods and deliveries deserves greater consideration.)

Is it time to consider turning these dying businesses into something more productive, like offices with ground floor retail? Instead of being torn down, could the existing structures be repurposed, at much lower cost? Into what?