It sounds like a twisted timeline version of the 1960s Japanese metabolism city planning movement. https://thetokyofiles.com/2011/12/15/not-like-a-cancer-grows...
It sounds like this is a benefit of functional regulatory laws in American cities.
If this wasn't required to be a public-transportation-providing parking lot most of the time, it would instead be some hyper-expensive privately-owned-and-operated building, just like the hundreds of other buildings in the city.
Buildings that Reef can't afford or use, and that most restaurants could not sustainably afford to operate within.
The fact that this land is used "inefficiently" is a feature, not a bug. It puts a soft-cap on the possible land value, which retains that land to be used temporarily in good ways. Without that cap, the land would just be permanently wasted in bad ways, because any good use would never be able to afford it.
Ie, zoning oversupplies parking spaces relative to commercial real estate, and so if you can put your business in a "van" and "park" it, you get to use land for cheap.
The article alludes to this ("Parking lots have long been attractive sites for urban designers, many of whom see them as wasteful, inefficient land banks."), but doesn't quite draw the connection.