I live in Rochester New York, the home of Wegmans & a majority of the stores come with huge parking lots! So maybe it’s not a store problem but a location problem, an issue of how much space is available in the town which they built a new Wegmans store. Maybe the stores are more prevalent here & more scarce in other locales. With designed parking a stand-in for a better shopping experience?
Interesting how the shopping experience is seen in different places!
We do have a couple of standard suburban Wegmans out here. This is one of the newer ones underneath a large apartment building. (Even one of the suburban locations has a garage, but the surface lot almost never fills up there.) This new Wegmans is a little closer, but not enough that I bothered to check it out. It's not as bad as the first complainers said but then I just kind of forgot about it!
Yeah I’ve never had a problem finding parking easily and quickly in the garage at my usual Harris Teeter on Columbia Pike. Lots of people walk there from the thousands of housing units nearby, which I’m sure helps.
You're talking about the Reston Wegman's, aren't you? Parking isn't really all that bad, I went the day it opened and several times since. It's hard to find the lower level of the garage but there are always lots of spaces there.
I've heard that Costco in particular designs their parking lots to be chaotic and small so that parking feels scarce and finding a spot feels like a "win" (supposedly setting up a feeling of scarcity and victory that continue over to your shopping experience, priming you for feeling like you scored a deal)
That's really interesting. Do you have any recollection where you heard/read that? Trader Joe's lots are kind of like that, but it's purely a cost-saving measure (less land) and it's kind of famous among urbanists who see it as a very efficient use of suburban land compared to most other chain retail.
I think it was in one of those “10 Ways Costco Gets You to Spend More” type YouTube videos, but it was a while ago. I’m not sure how true it is, but I ever since hearing it, I’ve started noticing that every Costco I visit does seem to have a chaotic parking lot by design.
"In Catholicism, a piece of bread becomes the body of Christ. In suburbia, a human being becomes a car."
The lesson, as always: when shopping for your next new or used idol, at least make sure you're getting a good rate on financing and a decent trim package.
Typically tho, even if you're taking a train you don't stop at another station than your home and walk to a store just to bring home a specific dish - you'd get something from your neighborhood or a station that you were arriving in or transitioning thru.
Likewise, driving you're typically stopping at restaurants along your way on the highway. It's not just going into a city and finding parking that's tough - it's the whole errand aspect of deviating from your route. City or town, you're going to stop somewhere along your route most likely.
Part of the distortion is pure perception. People love to complain about parking at the Pentagon City, Costco, but I always go straight to the garage and I always find a space, usually on the second or third level. Even when it's crazy busy there's space in the garage. It seems some people habitually bog themselves down in the surface lot.
I think garages have this strange way of building anxiety in drivers when they are somewhat full. In an open lot, you can see at a glance how full it is, but in a garage, it's less obvious, so entering one feels like a gamble. Even worse, since lower spaces naturally fill up faster, there's a feeling of greater and greater unease as you drive up the garage and still haven't found a space, with a fear that you will get to the top and find no spaces up there either, and thus will have wasted all that time climbing.
Good electronic signage and occupancy counts can go a long way towards removing this unease, though. It takes the gamble away.
I live in Rochester New York, the home of Wegmans & a majority of the stores come with huge parking lots! So maybe it’s not a store problem but a location problem, an issue of how much space is available in the town which they built a new Wegmans store. Maybe the stores are more prevalent here & more scarce in other locales. With designed parking a stand-in for a better shopping experience?
Interesting how the shopping experience is seen in different places!
We do have a couple of standard suburban Wegmans out here. This is one of the newer ones underneath a large apartment building. (Even one of the suburban locations has a garage, but the surface lot almost never fills up there.) This new Wegmans is a little closer, but not enough that I bothered to check it out. It's not as bad as the first complainers said but then I just kind of forgot about it!
Yeah I’ve never had a problem finding parking easily and quickly in the garage at my usual Harris Teeter on Columbia Pike. Lots of people walk there from the thousands of housing units nearby, which I’m sure helps.
You're talking about the Reston Wegman's, aren't you? Parking isn't really all that bad, I went the day it opened and several times since. It's hard to find the lower level of the garage but there are always lots of spaces there.
Yes. I'm sure it's fine, I was just discouraged by the raft of parking-related complaints right when it opened
I've heard that Costco in particular designs their parking lots to be chaotic and small so that parking feels scarce and finding a spot feels like a "win" (supposedly setting up a feeling of scarcity and victory that continue over to your shopping experience, priming you for feeling like you scored a deal)
That's really interesting. Do you have any recollection where you heard/read that? Trader Joe's lots are kind of like that, but it's purely a cost-saving measure (less land) and it's kind of famous among urbanists who see it as a very efficient use of suburban land compared to most other chain retail.
I think it was in one of those “10 Ways Costco Gets You to Spend More” type YouTube videos, but it was a while ago. I’m not sure how true it is, but I ever since hearing it, I’ve started noticing that every Costco I visit does seem to have a chaotic parking lot by design.
"In Catholicism, a piece of bread becomes the body of Christ. In suburbia, a human being becomes a car."
The lesson, as always: when shopping for your next new or used idol, at least make sure you're getting a good rate on financing and a decent trim package.
Typically tho, even if you're taking a train you don't stop at another station than your home and walk to a store just to bring home a specific dish - you'd get something from your neighborhood or a station that you were arriving in or transitioning thru.
Likewise, driving you're typically stopping at restaurants along your way on the highway. It's not just going into a city and finding parking that's tough - it's the whole errand aspect of deviating from your route. City or town, you're going to stop somewhere along your route most likely.
Part of the distortion is pure perception. People love to complain about parking at the Pentagon City, Costco, but I always go straight to the garage and I always find a space, usually on the second or third level. Even when it's crazy busy there's space in the garage. It seems some people habitually bog themselves down in the surface lot.
I think garages have this strange way of building anxiety in drivers when they are somewhat full. In an open lot, you can see at a glance how full it is, but in a garage, it's less obvious, so entering one feels like a gamble. Even worse, since lower spaces naturally fill up faster, there's a feeling of greater and greater unease as you drive up the garage and still haven't found a space, with a fear that you will get to the top and find no spaces up there either, and thus will have wasted all that time climbing.
Good electronic signage and occupancy counts can go a long way towards removing this unease, though. It takes the gamble away.