Feature: Vertical Integration

Christian Gulliksen

08/01/2007

Now awash in accoutrements once reserved for game rooms—checkered floors, custom cabinets, flat-screen televisions, bars and memorabilia—the garage has experienced a stunning transformation, from utilitarian afterthought to recreational hangout. But serious collectors still yearn for something more: space.

The Phantom Park system has two primary functions: storing cars in subterranean bays and acting as a ramp alternative for underground garages. (Click images to enlarge)

In neighborhoods from Manhattan to Malibu—where real estate agents consider 40 or 50 feet of street frontage an extravagance—residents barely have enough room for their everyday vehicles, let alone the Gullwing or Miura. Then, there are upscale communities where design boards would sooner approve a zebra-stripe paint job than a sprawling 10-car garage.

When such circumstances rule out lateral expansion, enthusiasts could be forgiven for considering a commercial district’s warehouse their only storage option. But they would be wrong. Because even if a garage can’t spread out, it can go up—or down.

According to Brad Davies, president of American Custom Lifts, customer demand drove the development of the Phantom Park subterranean lift. "We got calls from clients who needed solutions for parking," he says. "Architects would say, ‘I have this project—I don’t know if you can help me.’" Often designing houses for narrow oceanfront lots, they also faced onerous height restrictions—30 feet in some cases. Because owners wanted living space above the garage, there was no place to go, but down.

Davies responded with the Phantom Lift, which lowers cars into an underground bay. Platforms may be placed as closely as one inch apart, and built even in areas with a high water table. "When it’s down, you don’t even know there’s a lift in your garage," he says. "With others there are guide rails, but we provide a seamless surface that matches the floor covering. And if the garage’s ceiling is high enough, you can leave the top car in place while retrieving the lower car."

The lift can also serve as a space-efficient ramp alternative for access to a larger subterranean garage—particularly advantageous in downtown neighborhoods or historic districts, where a ramp might be impossible to install. Although most clients place the lift in their garage, a Phantom Park can be used almost anywhere. Davies notes that a current project will position a lift in the middle of a driveway. As with his other lifts, it will be virtually impossible to detect when closed.

American Custom Lifts offers the Phantom Park in four standard models, but Davies says most installations depart from these specifications. "Some clients might need lifts that support seven-, eight- or ten-thousand pounds, with different platform sizes," he says. And there’s no need to think conservatively when considering dimensions. "We can even do this for motorhomes," Davies adds. The cost of a Phantom Lift starts around $40,000, before installation costs, and rises depending on the degree of personalization.
Ari Milstein’s AutoMotion takes the concept a step further with an ingenious parking system that borrows warehousing technology to move cars on pallets. Completely automated, the process begins when a plasma screen and four laser scanners guide the driver onto a pallet in a specially designed entrance room that looks like a typical two-car garage from the exterior. After the driver exits the car and leaves the room, the transporter unit—an elevator that moves both vertically and laterally—lowers the car to a subterranean level, where it enters a center lane lined on either side with stacked "parking spaces" designed to accept the automobile-laden pallet. (The size of these spaces can be tailored to suit anything from a Smart to a Hummer.)

When retrieving the car, the reverse process adds a 180-spin, so that cars return to the entrance room facing outward—no one has to back out. "The system decides where to park the cars based on logical sequencing programs for the fastest retrieval times," says Milstein. Both drop-off and pick-up take about a minute and a half, from start to finish.

AutoMotion borrows warehouse technology for optimum use of space; the fully automated system can be scaled for any residential project. (Click image to enlarge)

By removing the human element from garage design—e.g. walkways, ramps and higher ceilings—this automated parking system makes more efficient use of space. The bottom line: A garage fitted with the AutoMotion system can accommodate twice as many cars as a conventional counterpart of the same size. It can also exploit long, narrow spaces, normally rendered unusable by sliding cars sideways into their spots. "No one can park a car laterally," says Milstein.

He stresses the adaptable nature of the AutoMotion design. "You can’t have a 14-level ramp system," he says. "But because of the elevator, I can go up 25 levels. And with modular design, we can go taller, skinnier, wider." The system requires only 24 feet of width to accommodate the entrance room—beyond that, everything can be built to customer specification.

For aficionados, the AutoMotion system will even play the role of museum curator. "Once you’re talking about a large collection of cars," says Milstein, "the sky’s the limit. We have designed systems in London townhouses with glass-encased entrance rooms, where cars are displayed on a turntable. You can program the system to bring each car up for display—it’s a showroom at home, and no one has to drive them into place."

Residents of condominiums and co-ops—who normally use valets—might also find special appeal in such a system. "A lot of people don’t recognize the risks when you valet park your car," says Milstein, who cites the potential for theft and damage. "They can put more trust in the machine." In these higher-density applications, he also points to the eco-friendly absence of idling engines, as cars navigate their way out of a large parking structure.

Like American Custom Lifts’ Brad Davies, Ari Milstein believes in the virtue of keeping his product’s presence under wraps. "We turn the garage into a value added component," he says. "It’s always been the black eye on every building from an aesthetic perspective—ugly. This is actually a design solution, not a band-aid."
But not everyone needs—or wants—a garage system that entails serious excavation or complicated machinery. For them, the solution might be going up, not down. Steven Curtis of Castle Garage Systems installs freestanding lifts in a small—but growing—percentage of his projects. "True car enthusiasts have known about lifts for a while," Curtis says, "but typical homeowners are now seeing this as a way to improve the use of their vertical garage space." One of their benefits is that they require few, if any, modifications to many garages. "Most of my customer’s homes are new construction, so the biggest thing we have to do is modify the garage doors vertical tracks to accommodate the height requirement," he explains.

Impressed by Rotary’s commercial lifts during his 22-year service in the Air National Guard, Curtis now offers the company’s lifts in his residential business. "These lifts are certified by the American Lift Institute (ALI), so we know customers are getting a product regulated by industry standards," he says, and adds a caveat emptor for buyers that just because one of a manufacturer’s lifts has been certified, it doesn’t mean the entire line received certification. He continues, "The last thing I want is for a customer to call and tell me their lift just failed with their Lambo on it—not good."

Curtis says that a well-built lift will have multiple safety features, such as dual-locking latches, locking on/off switches for child safety and an enclosed lift mechanism to guard against potential pinch-point accidents. And for those who live in seismically unstable areas, he advises using a contractor familiar with proper anchoring procedures.

Curtis’s lifts come in two lengths—the larger is long enough to handle an extended-cab pickup truck—and can support up to 7,000 pounds. "If you want to store another car under the lift," he says, "then our standard lift will rise up to 5 feet 3 inches and the larger lift will rise to 6 feet 4 inches. If on the other hand you simply want a lift to work on your car, then you do not need that much space." Curtis offers various accessories, such as a drip tray to protect vehicles stored beneath, casters for lift mobility and solid platforms installed between the runways for motorcycles and other garage items. Base installed prices peak at $6,300.

Whatever the method—whether going up or down—nearly any collector can find a way to squeeze more cars into the garage. So the next time you find yourself at Christie’s or Barrett-Jackson with the urge to bid, go ahead and raise the paddle. Your significant other might not appreciate losing the we-don’t-have-the-room argument, but finding the extra space for that classic will no longer be an acquisition’s automatic deal breaker.

American Custom Lifts, www.aclifts.com
AutoMotion Parking Systems, www.automotionparking.com
Castle Garage Systems, www.castlegaragesystems.com