Automated parking garage hopes to park first car in downtown Raleigh by New Year’s Eve

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Earlier this week, we told you about the new “City Gateway” development coming to downtown Raleigh. It’ll have a hotel, housing, retail, and a parking garage.

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However, that garage won’t be like any other in North Carolina. Many people take an elevator every day and soon, your car could too.

A new automated parking garage is coming to downtown Raleigh. You can order your car on any IOS or Android phone and it can park 98% of all passenger vehicles sold in the US.

“It will take it down, put it on to a shuttle, run it back through the building,” Dasher Lawless AUTOParkit President and CEO Christopher Alan said.

According to AUTOParkit’s parent company Dasher Lawless, the garage will have multiple “load bays” where you can get your vehicle.

“When you want it back, you touch your iPhone and the car comes back to you in approximately 180 seconds,” Alan said.

If a customer doesn’t grab their vehicle within three minutes, it’s reparked.

“Our goal is to park our first car by Dec. 31,” Alan said.

The automated parking garage will be a part of the City Gateway development, which will also include housing, a hotel, and retail.

While the ‘AUTOParkit’ garage will be completed first, it’s not the first of its kind.

Alan told CBS 17 Investigates their first garage was built in 2010.

“It was the prototype, the pilot project for automated parking for the city of Los Angeles,” he said. “We helped write codes for the city of L.A. that got adopted across the United States for the most part.”

Now, there are more than two-dozen across the country, with the nearest one in Detroit.

Alan told CBS 17 the garage will use less concrete than a typical garage and instead use more steel, which he said is more environmentally friendly.

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“It’s smart planning,” he said. “If you take a typical parking structure and you can park 200 cars in that square, I can park 400.”

The facility will be fully automated and will have an electric vehicle charging station.

When asked what the electricity demands are for a facility like the one headed downtown, Alan said, “Way less than what you would think and way less than a typical parking structure. When you look at energy consumption, an auto parking system uses approximately 60% less electricity.

“The reason for that is the cars aren’t driving around inside the system,” he said. “You’re not taking noxious fumes, emissions from the cars and pumping them out into the surrounding community because they’re not running.”

According to Alan, the design reduces the need for mechanical ventilation because vehicles aren’t running inside the garage. Plus, since people won’t be inside the garage, there’s less of a need for lighting and security.

Even fully autonomous vehicles, which aren’t on the streets of Raleigh quite yet, can call the inside home.

“Currently, we don’t have any contract or agreement in place with an autonomous vehicle company. But as designers and developers, we think it’s important that we’re always doing everything we can to try to plan for the future,” said Asher McGelothlin, the development manager with First Floor, one of the companies involved in the City Gateway project.

According to AUTOParkit, if there’s a malfunction or power outages, a technician can respond, or the issue can be fixed remotely because garages are monitored 24-7.

Developers said the price to park is yet to be determined.

CBS 17’s Mary Smith is an Investigative Reporter focused on Digging Deeper and Getting Answers. If you have a story that needs investigating, send an email to [email protected].

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