Next month, Chicago-based SpaceSaver Parking Co. will open what reportedly will be the nation’s first fully automatic parking garage.
The garage, under a newly constructed apartment building, will use a completely mechanized pallet and elevator system, manufactured in and commonly used in Germany. The system will automatically park and store 74 vehicles next to and on top of one another on four underground levels.
Drivers will enter the garage, swipe a magnetic identification card through a card reader, which opens an entry door to the garage proper. They will position their cars on to a metal pallet, resting on a mechanized lift. The lift lowers the vehicle into the storage vault, two lanes of parking on either side of the mechanized lift, which runs on a track. No labor is needed.
This might sound a bit strange to the average American, who’s used to driving directly into a garage space, parallel-parking (if he or she is lucky enough to find a space) or handing off the car to a valet parker. But, automated garages are among several innovative solutions that could help Chicago’s estimated 1 million residential parkers.
“The primary benefit is that you can fit twice the number of cars in the same amount of space,” says Robert R. Bailey III, president of SpaceSaver Parking, which manufactures parking structures. He estimates the project’s total cost is $1.5 million, about 50 percent more per space than self-parking or valet-parking structures.
That’s not necessarily a drawback, he claims. “If you’re a developer who wants to build a condo or apartment building on a small amount of land and you have to have a certain number of parking spaces, this unit pays for itself easily. Otherwise, the whole building isn’t feasible.”
Only problem with SpaceSaver’s system? It’s located at 15th & I Streets N.W. in downtown Washington, D.C., not Chicago.
That’s because Washington’s residential parking problems are so bad, parking experts say, that municipal officials were willing to gamble on approving use of the system, even though its building code doesn’t expressly allow it.
As for Chicago? According to Edward J. Kus, Chicago acting zoning administrator, a municipal ordinance proposal permitting structures like SpaceSaver’s is pending before the City Council’s Committee on Buildings.
“Because there are no completely automated garages operational in the U.S. currently, there’s no way to assess them,” he says. “We’re waiting to see how the Washington project turns out.”
A second ordinance, to approve usage of mechanical stackers, a popular residential parking solution in New York City, also is pending, Kus adds.
Stackers, some sold locally by a SpaceSaver affiliate, Mid-American Elevator Co., are car storage platform lifts. Drivers park vehicles on a stacker, exit from their vehicles and turn a key switch that raises the vehicle about 5 feet, allowing another car to be parked underneath.
Currently a handful of Chicago residential buildings, such as 550 and 560 W. Fulton St., have stackers. Over the last 10 years, they were installed without zoning approval, says Kus, “because the Building Department decided to issue developers elevator permits as a basis for installation.”
“We know they work in loft conversions where there’s a storage problem,” he elaborates. “We’re researching what other cities have enacted into their ordinances to protect parkers from mishaps like elevator malfunctions.”
There’s no timetable for submitting the ordinances to City Council yet, Kus says. The Building Department is still working on which standards should be included.
“Having a stacker is an incredible advantage,” says Ronny Ziebart, a commercial real estate financier. She bought a double stacker for $11,000 in September 1999 when she and her husband bought a two-bedroom in Fulton Station, a River North midrise.
“Parking on the street is miserable,” she says. “During the day, lots of reverse commuters park on my street making spaces hard to find. This is a cost-effective, safe solution. My lift has to be inspected by the city annually.”
According to Dick Beebe, a nationally recognized parking expert with Consulting Engineers Group, a Mt. Prospect-based consultancy, one solution popular in Europe and the Middle East involves satellite parking garages.
Able to accommodate about 5,000 vehicles, these structures are located centrally. Shuttles between owners’ homes and the garages run frequently.
“I think that someone’s going to seriously try this in the U.S. soon,” Beebe predicts. “But, to work it’s going to take a change in the philosophical mindset of lots of folks. People here are reluctant to park their BMWs in a lot 4 miles from home.”
Many novel solutions are based in California. “Some Los Angeles suburbs with residential parking permit districts sell daytime permits to commuters who work in nearby businesses,” says Prof. Donald C. Shoup, chairman of the Urban Planning Department at the University of California at Los Angeles.
“All money is returned to the permit districts for repairing the sidewalks or whatever residents choose,” he explains. “Most cities make a big mistake right now. They give away the right to park on residential streets or restrict permits to residents. They ignore the option of selling a few permits to non-residents and using the money to improve neighborhoods.”
Manhattan Beach, a Southern California coastal town, doesn’t enforce its municipal ordinance against blocking driveways with parked cars unless someone complains, says Robert Osborne, parking director.
“This practice has almost doubled residential parking spaces along our 2-mile, high-density coastal frontage,” he says.
“These ideas sound interesting, but could be administrative nightmares to implement,” responds Kus, the Chicago zoning official. “Our proposed ordinance also addresses driveways. If your home has access to an alley, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a driveway in front of your home leading to a garage. You’d have to access it from the alley.
“The reason is simple math,” he explains. “Six houses with front driveways on a block take up 25 percent of that street’s available parking. There are also problems with pedestrian traffic and people parking two cars in a driveway that only holds one.”
Kus also expects the proposed ordinance to increase usage of shared lots, an idea gaining significant popularity nationwide, according to Beebe, the Mt. Prospect parking expert. These are lots owned by public schools, restaurants or churches, whose owners allow paying customers to park there in off-peak hours.
Last year, 10 local schools operated shared lots and kept the revenues. “It’s proved so successful that we’re going to revamp the existing ordinance to make it easier for organizations to provide shared lots,” Kus says. “Currently, the application process is too cumbersome.”
That’s not the only local suggestion being considered. A prominent Chicago building developer, experienced in novel solutions to residential parking, is promoting a traffic-based solution.
Three years ago David (Buzz) Ruttenberg, chairman of Belgravia Group, refurbished an underutilized garage on the Near North Side and reopened it as the city’s first stand-alone condominium garage. The 280 spaces, priced in the mid-$20,000s, sold out almost immediately, he says.
Ruttenberg’s new idea? He’s proposing the city reconfigure some of the North Side’s widest streets, such as Dickens Street and Oakdale Avenue, using a plan “similar to what the city successfully used on Superior Street, a one-way street in River North.”
“There’s angled, perpendicular parking on the street’s north side and parallel parking on the south,” he explains. “For a minimal cost, you could almost double the number of spaces on one side.”
Coincidentally, Manhattan Beach is experimenting informally with a variation of this solution with positive results. Residents who own small cars park them perpendicularlyto the curb instead of horizontally. “We’re getting two spaces into a formerly one-car space without an increase in accidents,” Osborne says.
As intriguing as these ideas may be, don’t expect too much, warn experts.
“If the free market were allowed to work, residential parking wouldn’t be a problem,” says John Van Horn, editor of Parking Today, a Los Angeles-based parking industry trade publication. “People think that somewhere in the Constitution there’s an amendment saying `parking should be free.’ They think they’re getting ripped off if they’re charged anywhere near the true cost of their parking spaces.”
“There’s a reluctance by developers, city planners and municipalities to go too far,” adds Beebe, the Mt. Prospect-based parking expert. “That’s because when you’re dealing with vehicle owners, you’re dealing with a bunch of tigers.”
