Post by bennyp81 on Jun 23, 2005 9:43:26 GMT -8
Jason S.
User ID: 0408214 Jul 7th [2002] 5:07 PM
The City of Santa Monica opened a new 294-space public parking structure at 1136 Fourth Street on Friday, June 29.
Replacing a city-owned 165-space surface lot, the new structure measures 100,000 square feet and has three-and-a-half levels, two-and-a-half of which are subterranean.
Sixty-six units of senior housing with 33 parking spaces for its residents are being constructed on top of the parking garage.
The parking structure cost $4,998,000 to build — or $17,000 per space, not including the cost of the land. Construction began in July, 2000.
Members of the community and City officials attended a reception to mark the opening of the structure on
Wednesday, June 27. The project’s contract manager, James Tkach of Benchmark Contractors Incorporated, gave reception guests a tour of the new garage, will be open 24 hours a day.
Cars entering the garage between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. will not be charged for the first two hours. Subsequently, they will be charged $1 for each 30 minutes with a $7 maximum daily charge. Cars entering after 6 p.m. will pay a flat rate of $3.
--/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
17,000 per space. And people talk about the cost of rail?
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 9286933 Jul 7th 5:57 PM
Subterranean parking is a fortune. In plans for the USC Basketball arena (and earlier, the Coliseum re-design) costs of $10K per space were thrown about as unthinkable for parking.
Now it's up to $17K. Wow.
Ray
User ID: 1460434 Jul 8th 10:25 AM
Jason,
Awesome point!
The municipal funds (and private developers monies mandated by local planning agencies) spent pouring concrete for structures over the last 10 years must be staggering.
The structures in Pasadena, Santa Monica, Burbank (and more recently Culver City) anchored cities re-vitalization strategies.
Yet, while the structures brought in customers they must have exacerbated gridlock by encouraging people to stay in their cars.
Seems that Santa Monica continues to spend on the car. I guess until Expo and the Red Line arrive in town they have little choice.
Maybe SM's development of a transit mall will enable new partnerships with the MTA to get LRT going - sooner!
Ryan
User ID: 9328513 Jul 8th 4:36 PM
In addition to the dollars spent by cities on parking, private developers must spend considerable funds on parking as well.
For affordable housing, the City of L.A. allows one parking space per unit for projects that are within ¼ mile of a major public transportation stop, i.e. bus or rail with peak period headways of less than 10 minutes.
It seems that as the L.A. rail system expands, market rate housing with one parking space per unit (located close to transit) could become feasible with good marketing to families in which one worker lived in an employment center served by rail, such as Downtown L.A.
Doing a quick BOE calculation, there are approximately 125 acres within a quarter mile of a rail station. If even 1/5 of this area was developed with housing at 50 units per acre (medium density), 1,250 dwelling units could be built around each station.
If each unit had one parking space instead of the normal two, at a cost of $13,500 per space (average of at grade parking under a building and subterranean parking), $16,875,000 would be saved by reducing the number of spaces from two to one per unit.
Now, the hard part – how to translate this (private) cost savings into capital dollars to build more (public) rail transit.
Perhaps a package of incentives could be assembled to encourage housing development near transit (density bonuses, expedited zoning and plan check approvals, and reduced parking).
For each parking space voluntarily eliminated by the developer, some percentage of their savings in construction costs could then be passed through as a linkage fee to the MTA or other entity constructing the rail line.
These linkage fees would then be used to leverage state and federal funding to build more rail. Of course, the housing would be built over a number of years, so a bond would need to be issued to fund construction of the rail, which would be gradually repaid as housing units were completed.
David K.
User ID: 9544623 Jul 8th 6:23 PM
Unfortunately, that $17,000 by itself isn't as damning as it might seem. The construction cost is covered if the space generates $5 revenue per day over 30 years.
I'm afraid we'll need to build a deeper case than that - all of the indirect costs due to choosing to spend that money on parking rather than rail construction
=> loss of tax revenue on that property, required road construction and corresponding loss of tax revenue to carry the added traffic (or alternatively, the cost of increased congestion), etc.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0164614 Jul 8th 8:52 PM
The Santa Monica Downtown Parking Task Force has been wrestling with how much more parking to add for the last six months.
The downtown business community wants more, of concern that without enough parking people will go elsewhere.
Considerations obviously include the cost and visual impact of more parking structures, as well as added traffic of more people coming to park.
Well-known New Urbanist Stefanos Polyzoides was hired to moderate and advise. His "Park Once" theme reinforces parking in a single location for all downtown-area stops, as a way of reducing circulating traffic and parking spaces a bit.
And there will be both the Downtown Transit Mall (bus loop) and future Expo light rail to help.
The current conclusion, though, is to build some amount of additional parking on 5th Street, and then begin a phased replacement / retrofit of the existing garages.
Why all this detail here? It's an example of transit-oriented idealim dealing with real-world current parking issues. And this is probably the best solution right now.
Don Hagstrom
User ID: 9454293 Jul 14th 1:45 AM
I think Darrell hit it pretty close there in the end. Even so-called transit-oriented developments (Portland is a good example) require huge parking structures in order to stay alive.
For the most part, these developments along w/ said parking lots would have done the same with or without the adjacent light rail line which carries few people.
Once it comes down to it, parking becomes a must--a value-added must--when it comes to development and economic success.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0164614 Jul 16th 12:02 AM
I disagree, Don, with your conclusion that transit doesn't substitute for parking.
The tall (9-story) parking structures in Santa Monica hold 633-664 spaces each. The short (5-story) ones 294-345.
A proposed new structure on 5th Street is estimated to cost $9 million for land + $12 million for construction, to create 500 new spaces. That's $42,000 per space.
By comparison, Portland's light rail has about 70,000 boardings per day ("few"??). At two boardings per round trip, and presuming all trips go downtown, that's 35,000 people per day.
A little more conservatively, say 30,000 cars that would have to be parked in downtown Portland, divided by 600 cars per structure, would be FIFTY new parking structures required without light rail. Even if the 30,000 is high, that's a LOT of parking structures!
It shows the benefit Exposition light rail will bring to downtown Santa Monica's chronic parking and traffic problems. Unfortunately, we won't have it for a few years and have to deal with current parking issues in the meantime.
Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 Apr 22nd [2003] 2:03 PM
Los Angeles Times: Tuesday, April 22, 2003
BEHIND THE WHEEL: Not All Parking Garages Are Created Alike; At the Grove, electronic display boards tell how many spaces are open, two SUVs can use ramps side-by-side and angled parking is extra wide.
By Li Fellers
Times Staff Writer
For Southern California drivers, finding a space in a parking structure is a dreaded but often unavoidable exercise in frustration. The endless circling. Stalking shoppers down the aisles.
Scanning for the glow of red and white lights signaling that a car is backing out. But that's beginning to change, thanks to the efforts of a small but growing contingent of designers working to take the pain out of parking.
Garage design has evolved from its earliest days, when parking structures were all pretty much alike: concrete slabs stacked atop one another.
Over the last 20 years, planners have recognized that a parking structure for a cinema multiplex — with its generally young audience rushing to catch movies — may not be the best design for, say, a hospital.
Today, good parking structures are built to be easier on users, make the most efficient use of space and get cars in and out as smoothly as possible. The most sophisticated garages can lead drivers directly to empty parking spots.
"I never knew so much went into it," said Daniel J. Burgner, senior vice president of operations at Caruso Affiliated Holdings, a Santa Monica developer and property manager.
Burgner remembered the day his boss, Rick Caruso, walked into his office. "He said, 'Find the best parking structure to fit my vision,' " Burgner recalled.
Caruso's vision was the Grove — the now-1-year-old outdoor shopping mall in West Los Angeles filled with high-end stores, restaurants and a 14-screen movie theater in a quaint city-like setting.
"We were creating a five-star resort shopping mall," Burgner said. "The parking had to be special."
For the next year and a half, Burgner scoured the world from his office for the latest in parking designs. He learned that there's more to parking than most people think. There is a method to the mundane.
"I was in search of components that made up the perfect garage," he said.
The results? Electronic display boards at the garage's entrance and on each level tell motorists how many spaces are available on each floor. Sensors on the ramps count cars as they come and go, updating the displays regularly.
Access ramps were designed to be roomy enough to accommodate two SUVs side-by-side, with separate lanes for quick ascent or descent through the structure and for merging to or from a floor of parking spaces. The spaces — six to eight inches wider than the average stall — were generously sized and angled to facilitate easy parking.
To create a "light and airy" feeling on each floor, there are no walls, only columns, to allow for natural light. Ceilings are high and painted white.
Burgner said he wanted the garage to have "the feel of a hotel as soon as you get out of the car."
To accomplish that, the company spent an additional $2 million to add balconies near the elevator bays and a crystal chandelier hanging from the third level to the mall's main entrance.
"It's our customers' first and last impression," Burgner said.
Across the country, at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a new structure dubbed the Smart Park garage takes the Grove's attention to parking design one step further: The system leads drivers directly to an empty space.
"There's certainly enough stress in air travel," said Bill Lins, who oversees Smart Park for the airport. "People are rushed. They're late, there's long lines. Add to that equation, in our case, 5,600 spaces," only a scattered 100 of them open. "You drive around and around."
As at the Grove, motorists entering the Baltimore Smart Park garage see a large sign displaying the number of spaces available on each level. But at Smart Park, the signs offer an extra level of assistance: Drivers who follow the arrows will be taken directly to empty spaces.
Every three seconds, sensors in each stall report its availability to a main computer, which then calculates the tally for every floor in the garage. Lights that can be seen from 100 yards away are strung above each stall. Occupied spaces are red. Empty stalls are green.
Baltimore-Washington International's is the first garage in the country to use such a system, said Jerry E. Fondaw of Signal-Park USA, the system's distributor.
After a year-long trial period on one parking level, Baltimore-Washington International is expanding the system throughout the airport.
Fondaw said motorists at the airport can find a space within one minute. Without the system, he said, the average search would take five minutes.
Lins said Smart Park has been a tremendous success. The airport has received many compliments in the form of e-mails, letters and even visits from people interested in using it in their garages.
Mary Smith, director of parking consulting at Walker Consulting in Indianapolis, said Baltimore-Washington International's and the Grove's extreme attention to detail and focus on the customer is "the wave of the future" for parking garages.
Smith, a national expert who is the co-author of a widely used parking design textbook, said that when she started in the business 27 years ago, "it was a cookie-cutter approach."
Over time, she said, as development has become more dense and parking structures got larger, designs improved and the emphasis shifted to user-friendliness.
"An employee who knows the garage doesn't want to pass by 4,000 spaces to get his parking space," she said.
"A retail customer who's never been there before wants to park near a certain anchor destination, find his way there and back. At a hospital, people are often under stress. There's a higher proportion of the elderly and the disabled."
Although good parking design is a key to commercial success, Smith said its value is still underestimated.
Despite examples such as the Grove and Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a majority of garages don't employ the latest design innovations or technologies because many people don't realize there is such a thing as parking design, she said.
The Grove's Burgner, with the enthusiasm of a smart-parking convert, said he will continue to improve upon the garage's features.
The next project? Burgner said he just got the green light to explore "scent cannons" — machines that emit pleasant smells, such as orange blossoms, throughout the garage.
"Our shopping center is supposed to satisfy the five senses," he said, "so why not our parking structure?"
------------------------------------------------
If you have a question, gripe or story idea about driving in Southern California write to Behind the Wheel c/o Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or send an e-mail to behindthewheel@latimes.com.
Þ-®-®-®-Þ
User ID: 0408214 Jul 7th [2002] 5:07 PM
The City of Santa Monica opened a new 294-space public parking structure at 1136 Fourth Street on Friday, June 29.
Replacing a city-owned 165-space surface lot, the new structure measures 100,000 square feet and has three-and-a-half levels, two-and-a-half of which are subterranean.
Sixty-six units of senior housing with 33 parking spaces for its residents are being constructed on top of the parking garage.
The parking structure cost $4,998,000 to build — or $17,000 per space, not including the cost of the land. Construction began in July, 2000.
Members of the community and City officials attended a reception to mark the opening of the structure on
Wednesday, June 27. The project’s contract manager, James Tkach of Benchmark Contractors Incorporated, gave reception guests a tour of the new garage, will be open 24 hours a day.
Cars entering the garage between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. will not be charged for the first two hours. Subsequently, they will be charged $1 for each 30 minutes with a $7 maximum daily charge. Cars entering after 6 p.m. will pay a flat rate of $3.
--/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
17,000 per space. And people talk about the cost of rail?
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 9286933 Jul 7th 5:57 PM
Subterranean parking is a fortune. In plans for the USC Basketball arena (and earlier, the Coliseum re-design) costs of $10K per space were thrown about as unthinkable for parking.
Now it's up to $17K. Wow.
Ray
User ID: 1460434 Jul 8th 10:25 AM
Jason,
Awesome point!
The municipal funds (and private developers monies mandated by local planning agencies) spent pouring concrete for structures over the last 10 years must be staggering.
The structures in Pasadena, Santa Monica, Burbank (and more recently Culver City) anchored cities re-vitalization strategies.
Yet, while the structures brought in customers they must have exacerbated gridlock by encouraging people to stay in their cars.
Seems that Santa Monica continues to spend on the car. I guess until Expo and the Red Line arrive in town they have little choice.
Maybe SM's development of a transit mall will enable new partnerships with the MTA to get LRT going - sooner!
Ryan
User ID: 9328513 Jul 8th 4:36 PM
In addition to the dollars spent by cities on parking, private developers must spend considerable funds on parking as well.
For affordable housing, the City of L.A. allows one parking space per unit for projects that are within ¼ mile of a major public transportation stop, i.e. bus or rail with peak period headways of less than 10 minutes.
It seems that as the L.A. rail system expands, market rate housing with one parking space per unit (located close to transit) could become feasible with good marketing to families in which one worker lived in an employment center served by rail, such as Downtown L.A.
Doing a quick BOE calculation, there are approximately 125 acres within a quarter mile of a rail station. If even 1/5 of this area was developed with housing at 50 units per acre (medium density), 1,250 dwelling units could be built around each station.
If each unit had one parking space instead of the normal two, at a cost of $13,500 per space (average of at grade parking under a building and subterranean parking), $16,875,000 would be saved by reducing the number of spaces from two to one per unit.
Now, the hard part – how to translate this (private) cost savings into capital dollars to build more (public) rail transit.
Perhaps a package of incentives could be assembled to encourage housing development near transit (density bonuses, expedited zoning and plan check approvals, and reduced parking).
For each parking space voluntarily eliminated by the developer, some percentage of their savings in construction costs could then be passed through as a linkage fee to the MTA or other entity constructing the rail line.
These linkage fees would then be used to leverage state and federal funding to build more rail. Of course, the housing would be built over a number of years, so a bond would need to be issued to fund construction of the rail, which would be gradually repaid as housing units were completed.
David K.
User ID: 9544623 Jul 8th 6:23 PM
Unfortunately, that $17,000 by itself isn't as damning as it might seem. The construction cost is covered if the space generates $5 revenue per day over 30 years.
I'm afraid we'll need to build a deeper case than that - all of the indirect costs due to choosing to spend that money on parking rather than rail construction
=> loss of tax revenue on that property, required road construction and corresponding loss of tax revenue to carry the added traffic (or alternatively, the cost of increased congestion), etc.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0164614 Jul 8th 8:52 PM
The Santa Monica Downtown Parking Task Force has been wrestling with how much more parking to add for the last six months.
The downtown business community wants more, of concern that without enough parking people will go elsewhere.
Considerations obviously include the cost and visual impact of more parking structures, as well as added traffic of more people coming to park.
Well-known New Urbanist Stefanos Polyzoides was hired to moderate and advise. His "Park Once" theme reinforces parking in a single location for all downtown-area stops, as a way of reducing circulating traffic and parking spaces a bit.
And there will be both the Downtown Transit Mall (bus loop) and future Expo light rail to help.
The current conclusion, though, is to build some amount of additional parking on 5th Street, and then begin a phased replacement / retrofit of the existing garages.
Why all this detail here? It's an example of transit-oriented idealim dealing with real-world current parking issues. And this is probably the best solution right now.
Don Hagstrom
User ID: 9454293 Jul 14th 1:45 AM
I think Darrell hit it pretty close there in the end. Even so-called transit-oriented developments (Portland is a good example) require huge parking structures in order to stay alive.
For the most part, these developments along w/ said parking lots would have done the same with or without the adjacent light rail line which carries few people.
Once it comes down to it, parking becomes a must--a value-added must--when it comes to development and economic success.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0164614 Jul 16th 12:02 AM
I disagree, Don, with your conclusion that transit doesn't substitute for parking.
The tall (9-story) parking structures in Santa Monica hold 633-664 spaces each. The short (5-story) ones 294-345.
A proposed new structure on 5th Street is estimated to cost $9 million for land + $12 million for construction, to create 500 new spaces. That's $42,000 per space.
By comparison, Portland's light rail has about 70,000 boardings per day ("few"??). At two boardings per round trip, and presuming all trips go downtown, that's 35,000 people per day.
A little more conservatively, say 30,000 cars that would have to be parked in downtown Portland, divided by 600 cars per structure, would be FIFTY new parking structures required without light rail. Even if the 30,000 is high, that's a LOT of parking structures!
It shows the benefit Exposition light rail will bring to downtown Santa Monica's chronic parking and traffic problems. Unfortunately, we won't have it for a few years and have to deal with current parking issues in the meantime.
Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 Apr 22nd [2003] 2:03 PM
Los Angeles Times: Tuesday, April 22, 2003
BEHIND THE WHEEL: Not All Parking Garages Are Created Alike; At the Grove, electronic display boards tell how many spaces are open, two SUVs can use ramps side-by-side and angled parking is extra wide.
By Li Fellers
Times Staff Writer
For Southern California drivers, finding a space in a parking structure is a dreaded but often unavoidable exercise in frustration. The endless circling. Stalking shoppers down the aisles.
Scanning for the glow of red and white lights signaling that a car is backing out. But that's beginning to change, thanks to the efforts of a small but growing contingent of designers working to take the pain out of parking.
Garage design has evolved from its earliest days, when parking structures were all pretty much alike: concrete slabs stacked atop one another.
Over the last 20 years, planners have recognized that a parking structure for a cinema multiplex — with its generally young audience rushing to catch movies — may not be the best design for, say, a hospital.
Today, good parking structures are built to be easier on users, make the most efficient use of space and get cars in and out as smoothly as possible. The most sophisticated garages can lead drivers directly to empty parking spots.
"I never knew so much went into it," said Daniel J. Burgner, senior vice president of operations at Caruso Affiliated Holdings, a Santa Monica developer and property manager.
Burgner remembered the day his boss, Rick Caruso, walked into his office. "He said, 'Find the best parking structure to fit my vision,' " Burgner recalled.
Caruso's vision was the Grove — the now-1-year-old outdoor shopping mall in West Los Angeles filled with high-end stores, restaurants and a 14-screen movie theater in a quaint city-like setting.
"We were creating a five-star resort shopping mall," Burgner said. "The parking had to be special."
For the next year and a half, Burgner scoured the world from his office for the latest in parking designs. He learned that there's more to parking than most people think. There is a method to the mundane.
"I was in search of components that made up the perfect garage," he said.
The results? Electronic display boards at the garage's entrance and on each level tell motorists how many spaces are available on each floor. Sensors on the ramps count cars as they come and go, updating the displays regularly.
Access ramps were designed to be roomy enough to accommodate two SUVs side-by-side, with separate lanes for quick ascent or descent through the structure and for merging to or from a floor of parking spaces. The spaces — six to eight inches wider than the average stall — were generously sized and angled to facilitate easy parking.
To create a "light and airy" feeling on each floor, there are no walls, only columns, to allow for natural light. Ceilings are high and painted white.
Burgner said he wanted the garage to have "the feel of a hotel as soon as you get out of the car."
To accomplish that, the company spent an additional $2 million to add balconies near the elevator bays and a crystal chandelier hanging from the third level to the mall's main entrance.
"It's our customers' first and last impression," Burgner said.
Across the country, at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a new structure dubbed the Smart Park garage takes the Grove's attention to parking design one step further: The system leads drivers directly to an empty space.
"There's certainly enough stress in air travel," said Bill Lins, who oversees Smart Park for the airport. "People are rushed. They're late, there's long lines. Add to that equation, in our case, 5,600 spaces," only a scattered 100 of them open. "You drive around and around."
As at the Grove, motorists entering the Baltimore Smart Park garage see a large sign displaying the number of spaces available on each level. But at Smart Park, the signs offer an extra level of assistance: Drivers who follow the arrows will be taken directly to empty spaces.
Every three seconds, sensors in each stall report its availability to a main computer, which then calculates the tally for every floor in the garage. Lights that can be seen from 100 yards away are strung above each stall. Occupied spaces are red. Empty stalls are green.
Baltimore-Washington International's is the first garage in the country to use such a system, said Jerry E. Fondaw of Signal-Park USA, the system's distributor.
After a year-long trial period on one parking level, Baltimore-Washington International is expanding the system throughout the airport.
Fondaw said motorists at the airport can find a space within one minute. Without the system, he said, the average search would take five minutes.
Lins said Smart Park has been a tremendous success. The airport has received many compliments in the form of e-mails, letters and even visits from people interested in using it in their garages.
Mary Smith, director of parking consulting at Walker Consulting in Indianapolis, said Baltimore-Washington International's and the Grove's extreme attention to detail and focus on the customer is "the wave of the future" for parking garages.
Smith, a national expert who is the co-author of a widely used parking design textbook, said that when she started in the business 27 years ago, "it was a cookie-cutter approach."
Over time, she said, as development has become more dense and parking structures got larger, designs improved and the emphasis shifted to user-friendliness.
"An employee who knows the garage doesn't want to pass by 4,000 spaces to get his parking space," she said.
"A retail customer who's never been there before wants to park near a certain anchor destination, find his way there and back. At a hospital, people are often under stress. There's a higher proportion of the elderly and the disabled."
Although good parking design is a key to commercial success, Smith said its value is still underestimated.
Despite examples such as the Grove and Baltimore-Washington International Airport, a majority of garages don't employ the latest design innovations or technologies because many people don't realize there is such a thing as parking design, she said.
The Grove's Burgner, with the enthusiasm of a smart-parking convert, said he will continue to improve upon the garage's features.
The next project? Burgner said he just got the green light to explore "scent cannons" — machines that emit pleasant smells, such as orange blossoms, throughout the garage.
"Our shopping center is supposed to satisfy the five senses," he said, "so why not our parking structure?"
------------------------------------------------
If you have a question, gripe or story idea about driving in Southern California write to Behind the Wheel c/o Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or send an e-mail to behindthewheel@latimes.com.
Þ-®-®-®-Þ