The Manulife Centre parking facility has good clearance and decent space between cars and for turning around corners.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail
The Manulife Centre parking facility at Bloor-Yorkville in Toronto used to have signs with the slogan “Parking at its Best.” The signs, sadly, are gone but the truth of that slogan lives on.
The Manulife Centre parking is, without question, parking at its best. It is spacious, with more than two metres of height clearance and 1,100 underground spaces. It is easy to navigate and clearly signed, plus drivers can have their vehicles washed and detailed.
If you spend at least $50 at a shop in its three-floor concourse, then you get two hours of free parking. If you go to the movies on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, it’s $3 for your first four hours.
The Manulife Centre parking facility is “parking at its best” not just because of the actual parking, but because it has the Varsity Cinema, Eataly, LCBO and a bookstore above it. It is a wonderful parking experience from start to finish. When it comes to parking garages, I am like Roman poet Catullus: “Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.”
Roughly translated as “I hate and love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.”
The entrance to the underground lot south of the building was recently renovated.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail
Signs indicate how many open spots are on each level.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail
Catullus was referring to his ill-fated love for a Roman lady, but his sentiment holds just as well to 21st-century parking garages.
I love the Manulife Centre Parking facility. I hate and despise most other parking garages and shopping centre parking lots that I’ve been to. Unlike Catullus, I know why I hate them and why I am in torment.
What makes a bad parking garage?
Well, for starters it was likely built before the year 2000. “Vintage” parking garages have low ceilings, little space, awkward entrances and isolated parking stations located in far-flung, isolated spots.
These are the dimly lit parking garages that look like they could be around of a 1970s cop show. In those shows, only bad things happen there. These dingy, dark isolated parking garages are where shady drug deals are done, blackmail payments made, where people get mugged, killed, drugged and run over. It’s where the bad guys jump Jim Rockford. On the upside, vintage parking garages are great places to destroy a Mercedes as Ryan O’Neal does in the incredible 1978 car heist movie The Driver.
The strangest thing about vintage parking garages is that in the 1970s and 1980s cars were bigger (except for today’s SUVs). So, these parking garages were never any good.
Rotten parking garages have too many poles holding up the ceiling. As my wife said to me yesterday morning, “Can’t they hold them up some other way?” Precisely. Bad parking garages have too many poles and concrete pillars which can leap up at any second and hit your car. Why do you think so may minivans have that gash on the rear driver’s side of the vehicle? Parking garage poles leaning into them as they turn the corner.
Bad parking garages have confusing payment systems. I can’t wait until they just scan your retinas and extract payment. Meanwhile, we are subjected to a myriad of payment systems. They all have names such as “EZ Park” and “Parking Made Easy” and they are the opposite. They should be called “Parking Conundrum” and “U Can’t Leave.”
Here’s a few examples of poor parking payments:
“Please pay at station. Don’t forget to bring your ticket with you and pay at the pay station 1.7 kilometres away at the other end of the parking garage.”
“Download our convenient App! Have your credit card ready, SIN, date, year and hour of your birth. App not compatible with iPhone, Android and all other mobile devices.”
“Insert credit card (a beat; then) credit card rejected. Please insert credit card. Credit card rejected. Please press for ticket.”
“Please pay at station. Arrive at station with your ticket. Stand there while the guy in front of you struggles to use the pay station like the apes in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. His face contorts in a spasm of concentrated confusion – “Card go in here … No … Press button. Where card? Where’d card go? Why button? Hello! What is tap? Tap who?" Minutes turn to frozen hours as Albert Einstein discovers: E = Tap here.”
Not enough circles. I like my parking garages the way I like my Busby Berkeley musical numbers, with lots of spirals. That’s why I am delighted that a six-storey parking garage in Kitchener has received a heritage designation. The parking garage, which opened in 1968, is designed in the Brutalist style and has a helix-shaped ramp, similar to those connected to the former 800,000-square-foot Lingotto FIAT factory in Turin, Italy.
CTV News reported that Grant Eveleigh, a Heritage Kitchener committee member, said, “I do not think that a large, multi-storey parkade in downtown Kitchener is worth of heritage designation and I would not want to see that protected.”
Well, Mr. Eveleigh, that’s because, in my opinion, you do not appreciate parking garages, especially Brutalist ones. Maybe you should come to Toronto and park at the Manulife Centre. Perhaps then the beauty of parking at its best will shine upon you.