Last December a demolition permit was filed on the car hangar parked between Tacos A Go Go and Christian’s Tailgate on the north side of White Oak Dr. Now, a leasing flyer for a neighboring development indicates a new 244-car garage is proposed in place of the existing structure. But that lot measures only 100 by 140 ft. How could 244 parking spaces fit on a lot where fewer than 20 spots exist now?
Well, what if the owner of the property was connected to Easy Park, a developer specializing in automated parking garages? An entity associated with the developer bought the garage at 2912 White Oak in 2016 along with the strip of 3 buildings around it — that includes Tacos A Go Go, Pho Binh Heights, and Lucky Food Mart to the west, and Barnaby’s Cafe and Public House Heights to the east. The Chicago-based company manufactures parts for automated parking developments, finances them, and operates them. It’s been involved in past projects in New York, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Washington D.C., and Mexico City.
Here’s what a robo-valet with parts produced by Easy Park looks like inside The Lift at Juniper St., an 8-story, 228-car garage in Philadelphia:
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The facility opened in 2011 after renovations were completed on the formerly conventional parking structure that stood in its place.
- 2805 White Oak Dr. [LoopNet via The Heights Life]
- Company [Easy Park]
- The Lift at Juniper St. [Easy Park]
- One Woman’s Quest to Design Parking Lots People Don’t Hate [CityLab]
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: Probable Cause
Photo: Swamplot inbox. Maps: Centric Commercial. Video: Sotefin Automated Parking
Eight stories tall, huh? That definitely won’t look way out of place in that area of single story structures, nope, not at all!
Also, I, for one, do not welcome our robotic garage overlords. . .
https://jalopnik.com/automated-parking-lift-nightmarishly-smashes-this-guys-1822232565
Cool video. I see it works well with sedans and small SUV’s. Show me the video with big SUV’s and trucks and then we can talk. 8 stories should not be allowed to happen in that location.
The 8-story reference was to another project, which has about the same number of spots as this one, in about half the footprint (59×100 ft). So in theory, this could be done in 4 stories (I’m assuming they’ll tandem park each bay).
Moreover, the floor heights for this type of garage are lower than in a typical building, or even typical parking structure. I presume SUV’s and pickups are stored on different floors than sedans and hatchbacks. I’ve seen floor-to-ceiling heights of around 7-ft (9-ft floor to floor) for SUV floors, and around 5-ft (7-ft floor to floor) for sedan floors.
We could be talking as short as 36 to 40 feet, which is not far off of the height of some 2-story houses in the Heights.
An eight-story parking garage. On White Oak. Seriously??
FFS people, it’s not going to be 8 stories tall. And if it were, it wouldn’t be the same height as an 8 story building. And even if it were 20 stories, it would still be preferable to the acres of surface parking that are there now.