In late August, my wife and I attended a community meeting at the library regarding a potential new building at the northwest corner of Dempster Street and Chicago Avenue. The developer proposed replacing an underutilized surface lot with a 67-unit apartment building with a small amount of resident parking.
Much of the meeting crowd was apoplectic. The clear logic of putting dense housing with little parking literal steps from a regional rail station and less than a quarter mile from nearly every conceivable convenience we have seen fit to build was derided as folly. If the building did not provide ample parking for residents and their guests, then it could only serve as a drag on the neighborhood, local businesses and the availability of parking spots on nearby residential streets.
The notion that putting a residential building without much parking in a walkable neighborhood with great nearby transit and ample services might incentivize folks who value those things to live there was generally rejected as fanciful and absurd by meeting attendees…