‘Mechanical’ parking is first in county
Council adopts code change to set rules for new system
LANSDALE » With the planned apartment building at Third and Walnut Streets approved, two code changes have been adopted to set new rules and regulations for similar projects.
That project plans to use an automated mechanical parking system that is the subject of one of two separate ordinances council recently adopted. During the Sept. 16 meeting, council held public hearings on two new draft ordinances previewed the month before, one of which set up rules and regulations regarding automated parking systems.
“That is a midrise building that is utilizing a mechanical parking system, to basically store the automobiles in a much more com
pressed space than they would traditionally be, in a standard garage,” said borough land planner John Kennedy.
During the public discussions on the Third and Walnut apartment project, developer Ross Ziegler and his team of consultants had compared their proposal with similar systems in use in Philadelphia, where cars drive onto a platform that then moves along rails to available spaces in a designated area, similar to a vending machine.
“After some discussion with the planning commission, we decided that while we can’t necessarily not allow them — obviously, this applicant has made application and is utilizing that system — we thought that there should be some special standards for them,” Kennedy said.
The draft ordinance defines automated and mechanical parking systems, allows them only by conditional use with approval by council, and allows them only in the borough’s downtown business overlay and transit-oriented development districts.
“It would be limited in where it could occur, just in the most dense core areas,” he said.
Kennedy said the Montgomery County planning commission had no formal comment on the draft code, since the Walnut building’s parking system would be the first of its type in the county.
“Quite frankly, they didn’t really know how to react to it, and therefore did not have
any comments,” he said.
Borough solicitor Patrick Hitchens asked during the hearing on the ordinance if an outside expert on mechanical parking systems was consulted on the draft code and on the pending application, and Kennedy said one had been. Councilman Leon Angelichio asked if the draft code addressed the possibility of shared parking between adjacent parcels using one automated system, and Kennedy said shared parking would need to be evaluated separately in any project application.
Mechanical systems are “costly, but it’s also convenient, and I do feel as the value of land increases, we will start to see this more and more,” Kennedy said.
A second ordinance was also discussed and ultimately adopted in a hearing Sept. 21, which Kennedy said was an outgrowth of talks on the Third and Walnut project and amends the current rules for the town’s downtown business overlay district.
“The first change is that it will create a fixed density in the district. The fixed base density will be 50 units per acre, and with bonuses it will be 75 units per acre,” he said.
“This was not done in the original version. The density was basically, whatever you could fit on the site,” he said.
On the Walnut building project, Kennedy told council, the residential unit density was 179 units per acre, which he termed “by far the most dense project in Montgomery County.”
The ordinance also calls for changes to the maximum heights allowed on the edges of the district, which Kennedy said was meant to provide more of a transition between uses and prevent projects like the apartment building, 80 to 90 feet tall, from being built directly across from houses only 30 to 40 feet tall.
The ordinance was discussed in a public hearing on Sept. 16, and Kennedy said it had previously been discussed and approved unanimously by the borough’s planning commission. No public comment was made by council or the public, and council voted unanimously to adopt it.
Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 9 p.m. Nov. 4 online, with various committee meetings starting at 6:30 p.m.; for more information visit www.Lansdale.org.