powderjunkie, I think you're kinda talking at cross-purposes here. You say that the parking lots on 9th Ave are "stifling" development, in that "if you can turn a tidy profit with parking it dramatically decreases incentive to build something", and you note that the City controls the "powerful lever" of parking supply, but...
... how else do you disincentivize that land remaining parking other than reducing the profitability of parking by increasing the supply? If you decrease the supply of parking the price goes up and there's all the incentive in the world to just leave those parcels as parking lots forever and ever.
I'm supportive of your position that ideally that land is used for something other than some crappy parking lots, but I think you're mischaracterizing the situation as 'we' (the City) having "ruined the public realm" there. As you say, it has been nothing but parking lots for 50+ years, and before that was rail yards. It has literally never, ever been anything else since 1883.
What do you think we do to incentivize develop of lands like that, or disincentivize keeping them the way they are? I honestly don't really have an answer, short of expropriation and the City/CMLC developing the land. To bizaro86's point though, it's not as thought there isn't already a crapload of vacant space downtown, so I'm not sure what you would develop there instead...? At this point it doesn't seem economically viable.
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