(MCT)—The parking garage could well be the ugly duckling of architecture.
Built more for convenience than for show, these concrete bunkers dot many urban landscapes. But as young millennials eschew cars for mass transit, and as fuel prices spike and land for new development grows scarce, some commercial real estate developers have opted to reconfigure existing garages for new uses, primarily housing.
It’s a nascent, but budding, trend. Leading the philosophical charge is Tom Fisher, dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Design, who says new parking garages should be built in such a way that encourages them to be repurposed, if need be.
In the future, “people will still have cars, they won’t disappear,” he said. “But the mass storage of autos because everyone’s on a 9-to-5 schedule will definitely decrease.”
In some cases, existing ramps are being redeveloped, particularly those in desirable urban neighborhoods. The Cuningham Group, a Minneapolis architectural firm, has proposed adding 70 to 75 affordable apartments on the periphery of a monolithic ’80s-era parking ramp in the popular St. Anthony Main area of Minneapolis. They’ve dubbed the project the “Rampton Apartments.”
Fisher said that more modern parking structures like this pose a big challenge to redevelop because their ubiquitous sloped floors and low ceilings make them better suited as “skateboard or toboggan parks.” Ironically, the earliest parking ramps were constructed with big windows, tall ceilings and flat floors, traits that make them ideal for use as housing today.
“In the 1920s and ’30s, developers and owners weren’t sure how many people would use cars, or whether cars were a passing fancy,” Fisher said. So they were designed in a manner that could be readopted for warehouse or office use.
That was the case with the former Rayette factory in St. Paul, Minn. Constructed as a millinery building in 1909, the seven-story structure for many years housed operations for Rayette, a hair-care company that championed the home permanent.
By 1971, though, the building was vacant and subsequently failed to attract any meaningful tenants until it was converted to a 340-space parking garage in the late 1990s. Metal bars replaced the building’s expansive windows.
Developer Sherman and Associates of Minneapolis purchased the building in 2001 for $2.6 million and continued to operate it as a parking ramp until recently. Its desirable location near the St. Paul Farmers Market, as well as the impending $63 million St. Paul Saints ballpark and Central Corridor light rail line, prompted the firm to begin redeveloping the structure into 88 apartments — a $25 million project.
