Parking Madness Elite Eight: Wilkes-Barre vs. Louisville

The final spot in the Final Four is up for grabs today, as we conclude the second week of the 2016 Parking Madness tournament. So far, parking craters in Dallas, Niagara Falls, and Federal Way, Washington have advanced to this elite stage of the competition.

In today’s matchup, a waterfront parking crater in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, goes up against an amalgamation of downtown parking lots in Louisville, Kentucky, big enough to fit a few football fields. Does either have what it takes to win the Golden Crater?

Wilkes-Barre

Reader Brian Ferry submitted the Wilkes-Barre entry, noting that this area is prime downtown riverfront property. But a lot of the buildings are abandoned — including the beautiful Irem Temple — and the prevalence of parking reflects the downtown’s struggles.

Louisville

This contender, in the great city of Louisville, comes from Branden Klayko at Broken Sidewalk. From the sky it seems like we might be looking at the parking lot of a struggling mall that’s lost all of its tenants except for a Sears auto repair shop holding on by a thread. But in fact, this is just south of the city’s downtown, in an area known as SoBro. Ironically, Klayko says, it’s home to the headquarters of the regional transit agency.

This isn’t Louisville’s first appearance in Parking Madness. A different Louisville crater made it to the second round in 2013. Like Duke, Louisville seems to be in the mix every year.