Parking 2.0

Let's face it, Metro Detroiters aren't just chained to their cars, we're chained to our parking spots, too. Nothing is built in southeast Michigan without a plan for more asphalt. Rare is the business that opens without "ample and convenient parking."

The region's myriad strip malls and big-box retailers look like an archipelago in a blacktop sea. How many times has a historic building or storefronts been razed to make room for a parking garage (the red-headed step child of big-city density) or worse yet another surface parking lot (the antithesis of urbanism).

"The parking challenge is the developer's biggest challenge," says Frank Guirlinger, director of development services at Sterling Group, a Detroit-based developer. "The parking ratio is the most important thing. It's what really makes or breaks a project in Metro Detroit."

Although suburban-style living is popular, it's not for everyone. The high-tech talent that many companies covet has been migrating to communities with workable and walkable downtowns. They yearn for dense neighborhoods that favor walking, biking and mass transit; where cars are more of an afterthought.

Some Metro Detroit leaders recognize this and are starting to think outside the concrete box. Sensing a growing demand for more transportation options, greater focus is being given to pedestrian-friendly urban planning, bike lanes and trails. The overall numbers may be small but the cumulative effect is less reliance on cars.

Better mass transit (i.e. light rail), on the other hand, not only gives people the option to travel further but allows developers to dedicate more space to people than cars. It gives designers the freedom to focus on building denser developments and increasing the quality of life by maximizing space.

"Space hasn't been at a premium before," Guirlinger says. "People have been more prone to sprawl and spreading out."

Open parking spots for open minds

The Sterling Group is at the forefront of this thinking in southeast Michigan right now. Its ID Woodward development in downtown Ferndale has the potential to change how developers and homebuyers look not only at parking but also expand what builders consider developable land.

The new four-story loft building will be built on what has long been considered an unbuildable lot at the corner of East Woodland Street and Woodward Avenue, five blocks north of 9 Mile Road. The parcel is 38 feet wide and 125 feet long, dimensions that have sentenced it to a life as a surface parking lot for decades. Until now.

"It's basically Woodward frontage that has been grossly undervalued," Guirlinger says. "We're taking that and creating an 18-unit building that is spectacular and urbanely responsible."

The building, which will be the tallest in the neighborhood, will have all of the normal loft amenities, such as open floor plans, high ceilings and indoor parking. Although 237 square feet on Woodward is dedicated to retail space, the rest of the ground floor houses 20 parking spaces.

Of those 20 spaces, 15 are provided by a European style elevator that stacks vehicles on platforms. There are five elevators that hold three cars each in what looks like a rack. The elevator moves up and down at the push of a button so a resident has easy access to their car.

"Each car has its own compartment if you will," Guirlinger says. "It's quite simple. Very user friendly. People are responding quite well to it."

That might be an understatement. Deposits have been taken on 10 of the development's 18 units in the first month. Good news indeed when similar projects throughout Metro Detroit (not named Book Cadillac) fight for sales. It also helps that its prices start at $130,000, a feat Guirlinger attributes to maximizing space. Most units can be had for about $150,000, making them significantly cheaper than other Woodward corridor lofts and condos.

The parking racks' novelty has become a selling point. Guirlinger points out the units are marketed toward "more progressive buyers," open minded enough to understand the idea and how widely used they are outside of Metro Detroit.

This type of car storage system is fairly common in a few American cities like Chicago, San Francisco and New York but widespread widespread in Europe, where space is often at a higher premium. In those cases some companies, such as SpaceSaver and Westfalia, specialize in stacking vehicles into tight spaces like matchbox cars. Their systems can stack as many as 80 cars into the equivalent of five parking spaces.

The average price per parking space in ID Woodward comes out to about $11,000. That's well below the average cost for a spot in a parking deck, which can range between $15,000 and $40,000.

"We're just thrilled about it and looking at incorporating them into other developments," Guirlinger says. "This has validated everything that we have had to plan for the in the past."

Mass Transit

It's hard to live in Metro Detroit and not hear this sentence, "If Detroit were just more like Chicago…"

It's a common refrain used to describe the local area's shortcomings. But until Metro Detroit builds an efficient mass transit system, making those types of comparisons is more akin to comparing subways with Hummers.

"Having mass transit and proper land use, these two things go hand in hand," says Patty Fedewa, president and Transportation Riders United, a Metro Detroit mass transit advocacy non-profit. "If you have mass transit you are going to have denser areas and mass transit works better in denser areas."

She points out that counter to conventional wisdom, there is "an overabundance of parking" in Metro Detroit. So much so that it undermines local communities in insidious ways. People who park directly in front of their destination don't interact with the neighborhood or become part of other nearby activities.

The surface parking lots that reinforce that mindset also breed disconnected and unsafe feelings. They often suck the walkability, and consequently the life, out of the surrounding area. Parking garages are only marginally better.

"Parking garages are not vibrant," Fedewa says. "They generally serve a single purpose. There is nothing going on in them besides parking cars. Parking garages are the opposite of vibrancy."

Effective mass transit, such as light or commuter rail, creates the density and vibrancy tourists and city dwellers crave. Providing those types of options makes living without a car not only possible but normal.

"The more vibrant your area is, the less space there is for parking," Fedewa says. "We don't need as much parking as we have."

Garage 2.0

Residents of the newly renovated Vinton Building in downtown Detroit will park on an extensive mosaic tile floor. Although it seems extravagant, it's necessary to breathe new life into the historic 12-story office tower at the corner of Woodward and Congress Street.

The floor was originally part of a cafeteria designed in a time (1917) when parking wasn't a priority. That lack of parking was one of the reasons why the Vinton sat abandoned for years before a group of investors began turning it into lofts a few years ago. The Vinton's transformation is nearly complete, but it would not have been possible without a parking plan.

"There is no requirement from the city, but the bank would never give us the money without it," says Scott Martin, managing partner of the Vinton Building LLC, which is restoring the skyscraper. "This is the Motor City. The standard conventional wisdom is you need to have one indoor parking space per condo to get the financing."

The 5,600-square-foot basement is being converted into a parking garage that will accommodate about 10 vehicles no bigger than a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The group is looking into installing a few car lifts similar to those in ID Woodward to accommodate a couple more cars. A large elevator at the rear of the building, accessible from the alley, will lower the cars into the basement. When it's all said and done, the price per parking space will average out to about $20,000, still at the lower end of the parking spectrum.

Although typical for other big cities, this type of adaptive reuse is a relative new thing in Metro Detroit. For decades, tearing down old structures for surface parking lots has been the normal method of operation in downtowns throughout southeast Michigan. These asphalt prairies have often served as parking lots for adjacent storefronts, creating de facto strip malls in once bustling urban cores.

We're starting to get away from that now. Several new commercial and residential projects throughout Metro Detroit are starting to put their parking underground. Ann Arbor is at the forefront of this trend with projects like Liberty Lofts, 201 Depot Street, and Tierra Place. Kingsley Lane Lofts, Citi Centre Lofts and Ashley Terrace each have two levels of underground parking.

Although this is old hat in denser cities where parking spots are worth as much as the average American home, it's a leap forward for southeastern Michigan. So are projects like the Shain Park expansion in Birmingham, where two levels of underground parking are being built underneath a block where the downtown park is being expanded. That mimics larger projects in Chicago's Millennium Park and Munich, Germany's automated parking decks under its streets.

Metro Detroit doesn't necessarily have to start ripping up Woodward, but innovations like these help us increase our density and vibrancy. However, to reach the level of a city like Chicago or Munich, we have to stop building multiple homes for all of our cars.

"At some point there will be a project that doesn't have attached parking," Martin says. "I haven't seen it yet, but it will happen."