The latest issue of Wired had an article on New York urban living, Drivin’ On Up: En-Suite Garages Make for Deluxe Apartments in the Sky:
Behold the En-Suite Sky Garage — an 8,000-pound-capacity freight elevator that whisks your Bentley directly into your pad. Of course, vertical parking is an old idea: At the Starrett-Lehigh Building, two blocks away, massive lifts that could accommodate entire boxcars of cargo once connected a ground floor rail yard with upstairs loading docks. Today, Martha Stewart rides those same elevators in her car to get to her office.
Starting at only $5 million.
The 200 11th Ave website has a Flash demo if you’re curious how it works.
I think the most interesting urban parking we have is 1310 E Union’s European style car lifts.
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Karl Nelson // Oct 23, 2007 at 9:17 pm
I’m not sure what the lifts are like in the 1310 E Union building, but at the Florentine (in Pioneer Square) we have some lifts in the garage. I’ve found them to be pretty handy — one just needs to get used to not being picky about which car one takes, as it is first-in, last-out.
Since I’ve gotten a few questions about the lifts, I wrote up a little post:
http://1stave.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/faq-where-are-the-two-parking-spots/
The other thing is that over time, we found ourselves not using the second car nearly as much. I think that most people can probably get by with just one car (or none) if they live downtown. But, if you need two parking spots, the lifts are really cool. (But not quite as fancy as the ones shown in the flash video!)
2 Matt // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:56 am
Hi Karl,
Could you post a photo of the lifts? I’m curious what they look like!
3 nitsuj // Oct 24, 2007 at 6:35 pm
jeez, that NY thing would be great. my F430 could double as artwork.
4 FAQs: What does the parking lift look like? « 526 1st Ave S #222 // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:10 pm
[…] October 25th, 2007 Matt at the Urbnlivn blog asked if I could post some pictures of the lifts in the Florentine garage, so I headed downstairs and took some snapshots. Apologies in advance for the quality of the photos — I took these at night, so the light was less than ideal, and the garage isn’t exactly a perfect place to take pictures anyway. But, hopefully you get the idea about how the parking works. Leave a comment if you have any questions about parking here, or about the condo! […]
5 Karl Nelson // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Matt,
Sure! I took some pictures tonight, and uploaded them here:
http://1stave.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/faqs-what-does-the-parking-lift-look-like/
Karl
6 Matt // Oct 25, 2007 at 9:10 am
Thanks Karl! Looks pretty interesting. I wonder how much a lift adds to the cost. I’m also curious, how high are the ceilings in there? The two car garages I have experienced will allow 6′5″ vehicles and I’m curious if you can stack two vehicles of that height.
7 Karl // Oct 25, 2007 at 9:31 am
Matt,
I’m not sure how much the lift adds to the cost of the unit — the parking spots are included with the purchase of a unit. But, some units in the Florentine only have one spot (no lift, of course), others have two (usually w/ lift), and a few lucky folks have three (2 on a lift + one in front of the lift). I think we’re pretty lucky to have two spots, especially since you don’t often find downtown condos w/ 2 spots for sale at $399,500.
I know there has been some buying and selling of spots throughout the history of the building — I’m not sure exactly how much the spots have gone for, but I’m thinking somewhere in the $10-20k range. I know that some folks rent out their spots, too. So, if you didn’t have a car, you could maybe make a little income that way.
I’m not sure exactly how tall the ceilings are. I think the pipes and vents are a bigger factor than the ceiling heights. I do know that the guy with the Bronco in the spot next to ours does put it up on the lift, and that’s a pretty big car!
8 Ben K // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:24 am
European Tower in Bellevue (http://www.europeantower.com) will have a mechanical underground garage. There’s a virtual tour which shows how it’ll work. Also, Icon Tower will have a mechanical garage as well.
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