Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Underground Parking

[S. Kashdan (skashdan]

Hi, This is Sylvie Kashdan of
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org

We are an urban cohousing community, with underground parking. Our climate
doesn't require heated parking. But, we were required to build underground
parking as part of our project  because the Seattle city government doesn't
want any more residences to be built where people would have to park on the
street.  The parking spaces are under our common house. It was very
expensive, and increased the cost of our project by about a million and a
half. The parking is on two levels, and our project is built into the side
of a steep hill, so there are a few problems with the underground garage
space.

For one thing, the entrance to the lower garage is too steep for some of our
members' cars to make it. So, some folks can only park in the upper garage
space.

For another, the venting of the space doesn't always work well. It is done
with automatic fans, but sometimes the garage space smells of car fumes.
And, last weekend, when someone burnt food in the common house kitchen, the
smoke collected in the garage spaces and stayed there for a few days,
despite the fans running.

With the cars in there, there isn't really much room for children to play
there either. Some people dream of folks getting rid of their vehicles and
the parking garages being turned into children's play areas. We are
surrounded by good bus routes, so this could be doable. But, right now, this
is far from happening. As a matter of fact, some families have more than one
vehicle. Since we have 27 families and 26 parking spaces in our underground
garage space, this means that some people are parking their second (or even
third) vehicles on the street.

We had some problems with the noise of the automatic garage doors opening
and shutting because they were disturbing the people who live in the
apartment flats above the garages. But, this has been fixed.

However, we still have periodic problems with the garage doors opening
rather than just closing and staying closed after someone has driven out.
The people who installed the doors say that this is a common problem, and
could be due to automatic garage door openers being under pressure in
someone's purse or backpack, etc. or radio or celphone transmitters in the
area, or something like that. People have to be careful to observe if the
garage doors have properly closed and stayed closed. And neighbors check the
garage doors regularly during the day to be sure they are closed.

Sylvie Kashdan
skashdan [at] scn.org
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Maggie" <mdutton [at] shaw.ca>
To: "Cohousing-L (E-mail)" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 7:48 AM
Subject: [C-L]_Underground Parking



Our winters in Northern Alberta can be brutally cold.  Have any other groups
felt that heated underground parking was important enough to include in
their project?  How would having underground parking affect a cohousing
community?  I can picture it as having potential for a multitude of uses,
like an exercise area for Rollerbladers, dogs, joggers.  Or other forms of
recreation or a place to hold large events.  I lived in a condo complex once
that had the parking underneath rows of townhouses facing each other with
pedestrian walkways and flower boxes etc between them, on top of the
parking.  When you drove into the parking, you drove to your spaces, which
were in front of a basement door into your unit. This complex was not
cohousing and no one knew his or her neighbours.  The kids did use it as a
way to get to each other's homes without going outside.  Would anyone have a
guesstimate as to the construction cost per parking spot for underground
parking?
Maggie Dutton,
Fort McMurray, Alberta. Canada.
www.fortmcmurray.com

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