If you haven’t seen the new parking meters that are coming you can stop by the St Louis Traffic Violation Bureau at 229 N 7th St.
You can also use these at Laclede & Euclid, they accept coins & credit cards. If you have a smartphone (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry) you can also download a free app here or use the web app here. Note that a small convenience fee will apply if using the app.
— Steve Patterson
Yesterday I posted about a parking garage attempting, poorly, to look like numerous buildings. In researching the garage I discovered in June Cheyenne WY approved spending a little more than $130,000 to upgrade the lighting from metal halide fixtures to LED.
Bob Bradshaw, the city’s special projects director, said the current metal halide bulbs are “burning out at a rate of a couple a day” and can cost up to $260 each to replace.
Not only are the LED bulbs more energy efficient, they last longer and require less maintenance, Bradshaw said. That means the city would save money on both energy bills and maintenance costs with the new lights. (source)
The new lighting is estimated to save $253,077 over the next decade, with the break even point “in just over four years.” While in Colorado & Wyoming electricians finished replacing the old halogen lights in our condo parking garage, located underneath both buildings. The lights are on 24 hours a day, between electricity and replacements representing over 16% of our annual budget.
A rebate from Ameren reduced our upfront costs about 30%, but it was still a substantial investment. With a payoff of just 18 months the majority of us voted to proceed.
Once our inventory of compact fluorescents (CFL) has been depleted, we’ll begin using LED bulbs in our stairwells and hallways.
— Steve Patterson
Parking, specifically parking garages, have been a regular topic here over the last decade, recently a musical garage in Chicago and two St. Louis apartment projects. While on my honeymoon last month we spotted another garage I want to share with you today, this one in Cheyenne Wyoming. We spent a few hours of our week-long Colorado honeymoon in neighboring Wyoming, having lunch in Cheyenne and dessert in Laramie.
Before the garage let me set show you what we saw on our Sunday visit.
Cheyenne has two municipal garages, each occupying a full city block. Cheyenne, the state capital of Wyoming, also has a large state garage. We drove past one municipal garage a few times, I only discovered the other two once home and researching this post.
I’m torn on this garage. On one hand the execution offends my sense of aesthetics, on the other is blends in better than the other two garages, admittedly I’ve only seen them on Google Streetview.
Is skinning a large structure to appear like multiple structures dishonest? Absolutely! I could get over that if the execution had active space at the sidewalk level, with space for a Walgreend/CVS, Subway, etc. The ides is right, not look like a massive singular block with horizontal lines. Details do matter though.
— Steve Patterson
Apartment projects, by their nature, have a greater density than neighborhoods of detached single-family dwellings. A century ago few parking spaces were needed in apartment projects, but now at least one parking space per unit is expected. Parking garages are often the answer to parking needs in urban areas. This post will look at two current examples: a new project under construction and a 1950s project adding a garage.
Recent new construction projects like 3949 Lindell have a highly visible attached parking garage, but there’s a better way — placing the garage in the center so the building conceals it.
Lining the perimeter of a parking garage with residential units is a great solution for new construction, but what about existing buildings? With old warehouses, such as my loft, parking is usually placed within the existing building footprint. The same usually doesn’t work for 1950s urban renewal apartments. So what do you do? Plaza Square was an urban renewal project that started with a 1953 bond issue, the six buildings opened in 1962. Only one has underground parking.
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Earlier this month I noticed an interesting parking garage in the block east of where we were staying on a weekend in Chicago, it was both landscaped and musical…
Here’s a list of the songs for each level (links to Wikipedia):
If you’ve ever returned to a garage and forgotten where you parked your car, you’ll appreciate the songs. You just might have Purple People Eater in your head all day.
— Steve Patterson