Smart park
by Alison Ryan
10/17/2006
Parking more cars doesn’t have to mean making more parking spaces – supporters of mechanical parking systems say the technology could pave the way for high-density parking solutions in places where space is at a premium.
The first bigger-scale installation in Portland is ongoing at under-construction condominium project the Strand, where 31 lifts will be employed. Each simple lift will let a condo owner drive one car onto a platform, which then rises so a second car can be parked below.
The concept is new in Portland, but it’s one that’s familiar in other states – and to other developers. Since 1995, California real estate development company Panoramic Interests has installed close to 300 lifts in “seven or eight” Berkeley buildings, said Patrick Kennedy, owner of Panoramic Interests.
“It’s been a boon for high density development,” Kennedy said, “especially on smaller sites, where the cost of going down is either prohibitive or impossible.”
The lifts are common in the bay area, he said, both in higher-density urban areas and anywhere developers want to be more efficient with the land they have.
“If you have a 10,000-square-foot lot, you can get triple the capacity of it using the lifts,” he said. “It’s pretty significant.”
Simple, cost-effective
The lifts entered the Portland market on the brainwaves of Mike Maloney, chief executive officer of Carbunk, which distributes the systems. Maloney was reading a car magazine at a doctor’s office when he spotted a mechanic-type lift and thought: you could use that to park cars.
A trip to an after-market car show in Las Vegas turned up limited options, Maloney said. But then he stumbled across Klaus Parking Systems. The company, headquartered in Aitrach, Germany, had been producing mechanized systems since the 1960s. And the latest Klaus products, Maloney said, were high-end lifts for high-density areas.
The mechanized systems had been considered for several local projects, said Mack Selberg, project architect at Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects, but ultimately didn’t work. But on the Strand, Selberg said, the team looked at a variety of lifts before realizing the simple single vertical car lift, similar to a lift seen at any auto mechanic’s shop, penciled out well.
“Simplest is best,” he said. “The more cars we tried to pack into a single-car parking mechanism, the higher the cost got.”
For retrofits, garage ceiling height is the biggest issue. In areas where parking is installed, height needs to be between 10.5 and 11 feet, compared to a typical height of 8 feet. The Strand garage, said project manager David Lintz, wasn’t specifically designed to accommodate the systems.
“We realized we had some extra height,” he said, “and one of the team members knew about the lifts.”
Reworking an area of the garage that had the necessary height made room for the 31 spaces. And although taller garage ceilings in existing Portland buildings – such as the Gregory and the Marshall Wells Lofts – makes retrofits possible, thinking about height before the building goes up is essential, said Rob Marzo, project manager for manufacturer Klaus Parking Systems.
“Adding height isn’t more difficult,” he said. “It just needs to be taken into consideration early in the process.”
More to come
The Carbunk team is expecting more developers to consider the systems. The cost of below-grade parking, Maloney said, is prohibitive – when it’s a possibility at all.
“In most cases, they can’t build more parking spaces,” he said. “They can’t go down any further.”
Cost ranges from $9,000 to $15,000 for the simple lifts, which the developers then sell to the homeowners. The maximizing of space, said Ken Chitwood, Carbunk’s chief operations officer, makes sense.
“You really shouldn’t be paying to park your cars on dirt,” he said. “You should be doubling your parking.”
But the idea has its challenges. No one knows about it, Chitwood said, and no one wants to do it until he or she sees a system successfully installed.
“It’s a new idea for Portland,” he said. “People need a frame of reference that it actually works.”
The big test – dwelling owners running their cars up and down on the lifts – is still to come, Selberg said, but he sees the systems as part of the city’s condo future.
“They’re definitely here to stay,” he said. “They’re working. The single lift is going to prevent the size of the garages from growing out.”
Carbunk CEO Maloney agrees. “Once these go in, I think it’ll be a domino effect,” he said.
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