Opinion: is the City Yard really under-used? And was it really a former neighborhood?

C-Ville Weekly claims the City Yard is an under-used parking lot, which could be true, but where is the evidence of this in this article? There's a throw-away line about it being a place for "parking dump trucks" and Charlottesville City Councilor Kathy Galvin calling it “a big asphalt parking lot where we store our brine for de-icing streets,” but that…