Design of Off-Street Parking Facilities

The decision whether a parking garage will be attractive, profitable and will operate efficiently, or whether it will be unsatisfactory to the point of being an unprofitable venture, often is made when the parking facility is in the design stage. This is particularly true of parking garages of the self-parking type. On behalf of the Building Planning Service of the National Associ­ ation of Building Owners and Managers, Hudson Moore, Jr. of Denver is quoted: “ A parking garage is like a fine watch. If it is designed properly and all of the gears are correctly tooled, it will work beautifully. But if one of those gears is out of line, if one specification is off, it is going to give you a bad time, literally.” Experience, several years ago in developing the basic design criteria for the Fountain Square Parking Garage in Cincinnati, Ohio, confirmed this important guide line. The Fountain Square project was to be a 1200 car underground garage to be developed as a public improvement. It was carried all the way into actual structural design. However, the project unfortunately became the focal point of an extremely bitter po­ litical controversy which resulted in its indefinite postponement, and construction even yet has not been started in that City. The firm was already operating five parking facilities with capital investment of $5,500,000. A team of architects and engineers visited approximately 40 additional garages in eight cities. Since that time, the author inspected many more garages so that the total number on which this paper is based covers approximately 100 parking facilities.