West Hollywood City Hall, With Severe Case of New York Penis Envy, Pays $2.6 Million for Space-Age Stacked Parking (VIDEO)

By Simone Wilson Mon., May 9 2011 at 4:20 PM

Car, meet Robot.

The suave, sophisticated WeHo aesthetic is about to get even sillier -- with a $2.6 million Unitronics parking garage. According to City News Service, it uses "computer-controlled lifts and conveyors to move vehicles into parking spaces."

Yay for robots! Mayor John Duran is already hopelessly in love with his new toy, beaming in a city statement today:

"City staff, residents and the City Council continue to work in upgrading the city's infrastructure to make sure our city meets the needs of a dynamic community."

Sigh. Nothing beats the fanciful feelin' of urban parking solutions in the springtime. But where to put the thing?

L.A. County's No. 1 gayborhood -- the definition of "too big for its britches" -- is already constructing a monstrous spaceship of a public library with three floors of parking (and, uh, three rooftop tennis courts) at Melrose and San Vicente, creepily dubbed the West Hollywood Park Master Plan (see below), so the west side of town is pretty much taken care of. Narrowing the options for a second mega-garage to...

West Hollywood City Hall parking lot. Duh!

It's not the worst place to add 200 parking spaces -- Santa Monica Boulevard can get pretty clogged -- but the structure itself is almost impossibly hideous, promising to cast its monstrous shadow over scattered cafes and dinky apartments like a great mauve sea barf. Behold the animated preview, whose hokey soundtrack perfectly embodies WeHo's always slightly off attempt at New York-style hip:

On the plus side, stacked parking is super environmentally friendly, as far as parking goes, and construction time is supposed to be quicker as well. Plus, robots!:

"Automated parking garages utilize computer-controlled motorized lifts, conveyors and shuttles to transport cars from the arrival level to a parking space and vice versa, without human assistance."

Still, look forward to some solid months of hellish spot-searching before the WeHo car mall opens to the public. And when it does, don't expect the genius robot thingy to stack your car for cheap. (We're waiting on a call back from WeHo press officers for exact timeline and price tag.)

For more on West Hollywood's awkward, development-happy gentrification stage, see "West Follywood: How a progressive town founded on renters' rights and diversity ended up gridlocked, angry and elitist." Now how do we get this Tron contraption to land our helicopters?

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

Tags:

City Hall, John Duran, library, parking garage, parking lots, Santa Monica Boulevard, Unitronics, West Hollywood

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People who come to West Hollywood who are trying to find parking in the club scene check out WeHo Park, now on the iPone app store. It'll help with the parking situation when it matters!

Chris Bray

Jersey Journal (New Jersey)May 20, 2009 Wednesday Garage glitch traps a man and his dogThe automated parking garage in Hoboken malfunctioned Monday, trapping both a driver and a dog inside their car.Ablue Toyota was on the elevator used to move cars to and from theirparking spots a little after midnight at the facility at 916 Garden St.and both the car and the driver were stuck on the elevator, accordingto Capt. Anthony Falco of the Hoboken police. Hobokenpolice had to pull the driver out of the car through the windows, asthe jammed elevator blocked the doors from opening.... Hoboken'srobotic garage has been touted as the first of its kind in the New Yorkmetropolitan area, but mishaps are nothing new at the facility.Lastspring, a Honda Civic was scraped along its right side when it becametrapped on a pallet and sank two feet under the garage floor lastspring. The 324-space garage is run by Unitronics, a private companythat took over garage operations from Florida-based Robotic Systems Inc.Underboth owners, the garage has dropped or trapped cars and ripped cardoors and windows off due to mechanical and software glitches.Hoboken Parking Utility Director John Corea did not return calls for comment yesterday.

thomasjcoleman

Yes we need to see the details and all that whiter than white looks hard to keep clean, but how about that parking structure (never say "garage" in WeHo) in Miami Beach that's become a quite fashionable site for weddings and other public events? Maybe something like that would do the trick in The Creative City as well as The Sun and Fun Capital of the World.