PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

AUSSIE ADVICE

Developers in the U.S. find themselves dealing with tricky issues such as how parking can be shared efficiently between office workers, shoppers and condo residents. “We’re trying to incorporate a solution for the appropriate ratios, given the peak demands that occur for various uses at various times,” said Joseph F. Coradino, who directs retail operations for PREIT and is president of PREIT Services and PREIT-Rubin.

New as these challenges are to Americans, developers elsewhere in the world have been dealing with them for decades. That is certainly true of Westfield malls in Australia, the U.K. and New Zealand, which frequently integrate basement, rooftop and structured parking with multilevel buildings, says John Schroder, COO of U.S. operations for the Australian developer.

Rooftop parking can help developers squeeze more spaces out of tight sites, Schroder says. The basic concept is just as it sounds: put a parking lot on the roof of a newly constructed building. Shoppers drive up a ramp, park and walk into the building. When the spaces are full, they drive over to adjacent decks. This arrangement is helping Westfield beef up parking for its expansion of Westfield Topanga, in Canoga Park, Calif., which will contain a new Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and two-story Target, along with three new parking structures. “The incremental cost of building rooftop parking,” Schroder said, “is nowhere near that of a brand-new [stand-alone] structure.”

Ramps that lead from one level of a deck to another represent an underused opportunity to add parking spaces, Schroder says. “You can actually design the ramps in such a way that people can park on them,” he said. “If you go up the ramp, there are cars parked on the right and left side. If you go down, they are on the right and left.”

Mezzanines help too. It is common in U.S. parking decks to find floor-to-ceiling ratios of up to 26 feet. This lets in lots of natural light, but it can be an inefficient and costly use of space, says Schroder. By inserting mezzanines between floors, Westfield lowers the floor-to-ceiling ratio to 12 or 13 feet. “That means you are actually adding a whole other level of parking,” he said. “The actual size of the structure doesn’t change, but you’re adding more cars. The trick is to make sure it is extremely well lit, well painted and welcoming.”

— JG