One of the sticking points in AEG’s plan to build a football stadium downtown is parking. Now, I’m not a civic planner, and I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for this, but in poring over the proposed parking plan AEG submitted to the city, the parking demand for Staples events drops by roughly 20% in 2013, and I’m pretty sure all of that is attributed to sports events. My math might be off a percent or two, but the number of sports events at Staples is largely a known quantity, given that 95% of the events (not counting tournaments) come from NBA, NHL and WNBA games. So why does the parking allotment for Staples sporting events suddenly drop (from 2012 to 2013) by a number that corresponds to almost exactly the number of spaces needed by one major sports franchise (specifically, an NHL or NBA team) over the course of one season? Data after jump.
Here.