I was sent this map without a source but I thought it was impressive nonetheless. It shows the SeaWorld parking lot in yellow. The green dot is where Orcas spend their lives.
edit: This is Seaworld San Diego, California
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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Here's something I don't understand about these county-devouring parking lots: why are they all one level? Is it more than twice as expensive to build and maintain even a two-level parking structure and save half the footprint?
One thing America has in abundance is land.
The other thing is greed.
So if you're ever asking " is this option really cheaper?" The answer is that they went with the cheap option.
ROI on even a 2 story parking lot is a lot longer than the one and much more expensive than double the price.
Paving is cheap, easy and other than drainage design is pretty straightforward. Put in drainage, grade land, put down bedding material for the asphalt, put down asphalt and curbing, paint line install signs.
A multi-story garage needs a ton of engineering, concrete and rebar and is custom to each location. Because you have a lot of weight in these structures
If you look at amusement parks that have parking garages most of them are land locked or purchasing new land for parking is so expensive it's cheaper to build a garage
(Please note I'm am a layman about construction, there is probably a construction person or engineer that can explain it better just a theme park fan that likes reading about how the engineer rides and have occasional tumbled over into parking engineering which is a fascinating topic of how much engineering goes into it)
I used to work as a drafter at a precast concrete company. We mostly built parking garages.
You're basically correct, paving for a parking lot is cheaper than building a multi story parking garage. A three level parking garage could cost about $20,000,000. And you still have to do the paving on the ground level. The parking garage needs engineering from licensed P.E.'s, hundreds and hundreds of yards of concrete, tons of rebar bent just so and placed just so, thousands of feet of high-strength steel cable, multiple trucks running from our plant to the site over and over to move the parts, then welders, crane operators, grouters, cleanup crew, finishers....
As opposed to just packing the dirt down, pushing some gravel over it, a bit of rebar and an on-site concrete pour.
From your last sentence, does that mean you still need rebar in a regular parking lot?
For concrete, yes. Asphalt, no. But concrete floors don’t need bent rebar, you just lay out the sticks in a grid and pour over it.
It is more expensive to build multilevel parking but its how the laws work. It might even be that the law required this much parking based on statistical models, which is insane if people are getting there some other way.
Imo we could reduce the size of parking lots by just requiring nearby businesses to allow unrestricted parking during their off hours.
I think sea world is old enough where the land was cheap enough.
Parking structures are something like 5-8 times more expensive per spot.
Yes, a lot of the time it is, depending on land acquisition cost. Plus you then have some amount of additional ongoing maintenance cost for the structure which is also more than just that of a surface lot.
Cars constantly emit toxic fumes whenever they're running. If you try to enclose a parking lot you need some extremely expensive and power-intensive ventilation. Maybe that'll change as electric cars become more common.
Multi level car lots without walls are a common thing in San Diego.
Bro’s never seen a parking deck.
Just don't build walls.