A robotic parking garage adds even greater curb appeal to luxury homes

June 30, 2014

When location isn’t enough, try a robotic parking garage.

That may as well be the tagline for 12 East 13^th Street, a luxury home development in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood that DHA Capital and Continental Properties are backing.

The development, which will include eight units ranging in price from $7.5 million to $31 million, was originally designed to have street-level self-parking, which would have only allowed for six parking spaces. Seeking alternatives, DHA Capital discovered Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) technology offered by Park Plus, a company that began providing car-stacking mechanisms for crowded cities like New York more than forty years ago, along with other parking solutions.

Park Plus has since studied technology used by the shipping and manufacturing industries to design an AGV system. The company debuted its first AGV installation in Brooklyn not long ago; 12 East 13^th Street will also feature the technology when the development is finished next spring.

“It’s technology that is going to revolutionize the parking system,” said Ryan Astrup, director of Park Plus.

The completely automated system allows any driver with a parking spot to drive a vehicle into a loading bay; the garage literally takes it from there. A guidance system parks the car, and when it’s needed again, a driver goes to the garage kiosk and requests the car’s retrieval.

Park Plus is at work on an app designed to simplify the system even further: using the app, motorists will be able to call to have their cars delivered to the kiosk before the drivers arrive at the garage, though it only takes about 90 seconds for the system to return a car.

The system has the added feature of being able to track user patterns. “For a car used only on weekends or only once a month, [the system] will put that one toward the back. Others will be made more accessible,” said Astrup. “It learns these patterns and makes the system more efficient over time.”

It has already made 12 East 13^th Street more efficient. Because of the system, the development will be able to house more parking spaces, allowing DHA Capital to offer more amenities to residents and to relocate parking to the second floor, which is generally seen as less desirable by residential tenants. The developer can then make the ground floor available for retail use.

Since the sales office for the development opened about eight weeks ago, more than 500 brokers have visited. “They have been very impressed by the system,” said Josh Schuster, principal and cofounder of DHA Capital. “It’s great marketing. [Buyers] want to be the first to have a robotic parking space.”