S.A.’S first car elevator goes up; will drivers park on it?
The first car elevator in San Antonio is ready to start accepting cars.
The question is: Are Alamo City car owners willing to start parking on it?
“I put my car on it yesterday. The problem is: Nobody else is really willing to put their car on it,” said Kevin Covey, managing partner at Graystreet Partners, which owns The Light building where the elevator is located. “It’s a safe system, and it’s a great solution for places where parking is sparse and a garage can’t be built.”
Covey added that the elevator, which looks and functions like a Ferris wheel for vehicles, will be used only by Light building tenants. However, this initial elevator is meant as a test to see whether it’s worth the investment in other areas of San Antonio.
Covey estimated the price at $50,000 to $60,000, after he helped design the elevator, having come up with the idea for it after visiting Japan and seeing similar car-stacking machines there. The elevator, which holds up to eight cars in a space about two parking spots big, took a year to complete from the initial design stage, although Covey said there may be a few more months of tinkering with it to improve the process.
While no special permit was necessary for the elevator in The Light’s parking lot, Covey said Graystreet had to get an electrical permit for the structure.
“It’s not a solution for everywhere; but places like the courthouses, where everyone comes at once and are fighting for the
same spot, it’s a good solution for that,” Covey said. “It’s meant for really tight areas like along Houston Street and parking near the River Walk, places where there are small open parcels of land within a block of where people want to be.”
The car elevator is cheaper to build and a more effective use of space than parking garages, Covey said, with parking expected to be about $1 an hour, if the elevators ever move into public use.
Kelly Saunders, a public relations manager with the city of San Antonio’s Center City Development & Operations Department, did not give an exact figure for how much the average
parking garage costs the city, pointing out that there are multiple factors at play.
However, Saunders did note that most revenue received by parking garages, both public and private, goes back into the facility for operating and maintenance costs. Generally, city parking facilities do not generate a profit for the city, Saunders added.
“It is always refreshing to see new ideas and methods that promote efficiency in such a car-centric society,” Saunders wrote in an email.
Covey said he believes the “crazy exodus” of people working and coming downtown was related to the ease and convenience
of parking, which he said has always been a deterrent.
“We have a lot of tenants who are small businesses downtown, and they’re just getting crushed,” Covey said. “I don’t know how many parking spots there are downtown. We probably should have twice as many, but this is a bridge to the urban paradise.”
Saunders said the issue isn’t as much the number of public parking spaces available downtown as that “there is a general lack of information about where the parking is available.” She pointed out that even during popular downtown events, with free parking widely advertised, facilities were not at full capacity.
According to Center City Development & Operations, there are more than 35,000 parking spaces in downtown San Antonio, with just 7,000 of those (about 20 percent) managed by the city, while most spaces are privately owned.
Saunders also said that new or nontraditional methods do not necessarily guarantee more public parking.
“With regard to the car elevator, the benefit has less to do with public parking and more to do with intelligent land use as it allows for a smaller footprint in commercial development,” Saunders wrote.
Covey said Graystreet has been working on installing the project for the last 3 ½ months, with trial and error involved in the process. Multiple controls for the elevator have been redone, and the motor powering the elevator also has been changed.
In Europe and Asia, where similar machines exist, the carstacking systems are designed for microcars and nothing bigger than a Ford Focus, Covey said. But the car elevator in The Light building parking lot, which was custom-built for Graystreet, is designed for American cars and should be able to fit a full-sized SUV.
“We’re supposed to be able to put a Ford F-150 on it,” Covey said. “We tried to get a truck on there, but it was slightly lifted and didn’t fit. It’ll be a tight squeeze.”
Covey hopes that ultimately, car elevators will be able to expand the number of parking spaces within San Antonio.