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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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.