Good question, and my point exactly. Whole Foods is all about a suburban model, and they love lots of parking. Actually, that site is zoned M-2, manufacturing, and it allows for a maximum of 10,000 square feet of retial space. They're conforming with (read: circumventing) the zoning by building 87% of the store below grade, along the banks of the Gowanus Canal, in the flood plain, on a site that in some places sits only three feet above sea level, and is heavily polluted. But that's another story.

Whole Foods' Manhattan stores have zero parking, and Manhattan car ownership is about 18% of households. The store they want to build in Darien, CT, would have 350 parking spaces, and Darien has 97% HH vehicle ownership. So one would think that in Brooklyn, with roughly 50% HH vehicle ownership, the number of parking spaces would be somewhere in the middle. But their plan calls for 420 spaces. Essentially, they want to saddle Gowanus, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens with all the traffic from customers in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Marine Park. Which is not to deride those fine neighborhoods in any way, but to point up the folly of Whole Foods' plan.

Elected officials need to step up and pressure them.

Unmentioned at the dedication ceremony, though, was the fact that Whole Foods is intending to build a large store at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 3rd Street, just a few blocks from where the mural is located, with a whopping 420 parking spaces and absolutely no plans to try to encourage alternate modes of transportation to and from the store. They've stonewalled community organizations that have called for jitneys to transit locations, ample covered bike parking, and delivery service. Our elected officials need to pressure them now - before they start building - to include sensible, pedestrian-friendly measures.

London has set targets to reduce pedestrian injuries and fatalities and is seeing better results than we are. It's about time NYC did the same.