History of Parking

“A Northwest Airlines jetliner returned safely to Miami after it was hijacked from Milwaukee to Havana, Cuba, with 60 passengers aboard, by a man armed with a hatchet and claiming to have a bomb hidden in his briefcase“.

This is the opening line to an article published in the 1971 edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel. One of those 60 passengers aboard the hijacked flight to Cuba was our very own president, Richard C. Rich. We’re back this month with another one of his once in a lifetime stories from his first 55-years at Rich & Associates. If you thought the Parking Industry wasn’t exciting…think again!

“The plane, a Boeing 727 landed in Miami after being in control of the hijacker for about 8 hours. Architect Richard C. Rich, 39, was on his way home to his suburban Detroit home from Nicaragua, where he is doing Architectural work, when he stopped in Milwaukee Thursday to visit his parents”…Here is what Richard C. Rich recalls from his unplanned and unexpected trip to Cuba!

“People may think it’s pretty boring doing parking garages but being in the industry has really afforded me some experiences that otherwise couldn’t be. One of the most exciting was a return trip from a project in Nicaragua.  I decided to stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit my parents on my way back to Detroit from Nicaragua. I spent the night in Milwaukee and my parents drove me to the airport the next morning. I got on the Northwest flight to Detroit, sat in the second row in first class and the plane took off.

Everything seemed normal until there was some kind of commotion coming from the back end of the plane. The next thing I knew there was a man standing at the doorway to the cockpit with a hatchet in one hand and a briefcase in the other, demanding to talk to the captain of the airplane. I think it was the flight attendant that got him on the intercom, told the man to be calm and that we had to land in Detroit to get refueled.’

Some of the people in first class with me left for the back of the airplane once the hijacker approached our section. Two or three of us remained in first class. I figured I paid for first class so I might as well stay there, since it wasn’t going to be any different in coach. But I seemed to be the best target sitting in the second row so I asked the hijacker if I could move a couple of rows back and he said ‘OK’.

When we landed in Detroit there was quite a bit of discussion on the plane. The captain parked the plane in a field far away from the terminal and I could see activity around the airplane from my window. The captain and one of the crew came back to talk to the hijacker when he said that he wanted to go to Algeria. They explained to him that we were on a Boeing 727 and that this plane didn’t have enough fuel, even with a refill, to get to Algeria. So they asked him if he had a second choice like Cuba, and he said ‘yes’. The plane was refueled and we left for Cuba. I don’t remember much discussion after that.

I usually carried a small camera on my business trips and I kept thinking ‘he appears to be accommodating enough to respond to us, I bet he would let me take his picture standing there with the hatchet and the briefcase’. But as chance would have it, my camera was packed away in my checked luggage.

When we landed in Havana, the Cuban authorities got on the airplane and the hijacker handed over the hatchet and briefcase. When they opened up the briefcase and handed it back to him, we all realized that there was no bomb. The Cuban authorities took the hijacker off of the airplane, and the next thing I knew we were ushered off of the airplane into immigration. We were questioned regarding our names, occupations, addresses, and a few other things. We were then ushered into a room that looked like it could’ve been a cafeteria. They were walking around selling some cigars and cigarettes, and we eventually had a meal. One of the flight attendants came over to my table and said ‘you better enjoy the meal, it’s going to be the most expensive meal you’ve ever had.’ She said that over in the corner there was somebody from the Swiss Embassy negotiating with the pilot for a ransom to be paid for the airplane to take off and I recall her saying it was going to cost something like $200,000.00!

After the meal, and I guess a successful negotiation, they put us back on the airplane and we took off for Miami. In Miami, we had to go through customs and immigration again. It was surprising to me that customs asked everyone who had purchased Cuban cigars to turn them over. Fortunately for me I didn’t smoke cigars so I didn’t waste any money. They asked all of the first-class passengers to come to a specific table. They called us by name and at that point I turned and went to a table where they had about 5 pictures spread out. They asked all of us from first class to identify the man from the pictures. I immediately recognized him and pointed to his picture. I was amazed how they had pictures of him so quickly. They then put us on another airplane to Detroit and there wasn’t much discussion during the flight. We finally landed in Detroit late or very early in the morning.”

102

This is the story of the extraordinary lengths Mr. Rich went to prove the integrity of his design of a garage in Dayton Ohio in the late 1950s, as told by Richard C. Rich.

“This was a two-module garage with a sloped floor and a parapet wall in between that was approximately 24-30 inches in height and 4-5 inches in width. The City (Engineers) would not approve the garage to open, maintaining that the parapet wall wasn’t strong enough to withstand the impact of a car going between 12-15mph and directly hitting it. It was hard for me to understand how a car would get going that speed in a garage and into the wall”. We sent some of our engineers down to discuss this problem with them further. Our engineers came back stating that the City did not budge on their findings regarding the wall. The City had hired some independent engineers of their own who came up with a formula showing that the wall would break down upon impact from a car hitting it directly at 12-15 mph. I’m not a formula kind of man, so I went with our engineers to the next meeting to resolve the issue so that our client could open their garage.

I had advised the client (owner of the garage) that I wanted to test the wall before the meeting. I told him of my plan to drive a car into the upper level parapet wall at the 12 to 15 mph speed. He volunteered to loan me his car, but I refused since I was not sure myself what was going to happen to the car hitting the wall at that speed. So, I rented a car and made sure it was fully insured. It took me 5-7 tries to hit the wall without hitting the brakes first. I finally got up the nerve and drove the rented car into the wall at the required speed. There was not much of a mark on the wall at all, but there was certainly damage to the front of the car. I left everything as it was at the scene of impact and then went to the meeting with the City.

As everyone was discussing the formula I said ‘I don’t know anything about your formulas, but I tried it out and I’d like you to come over and see what had happened.’ At that point the whole group, including our engineers, the City and their independent engineers, went over to take a look at what had happened to the wall. The wall showed very little distress, just a few scratches from where the car had impacted it. The car, on the other hand, suffered front end damage. They all reviewed the site and concluded that their formulas did not work because it did not treat the car as a compressible object. The car absorbed the shock of the impact resulting in front end damage, but the wall showed little impact. Upon review, the wall passed the City’s inspection and our client was able to open the garage.”

“It was truly an experience. It’s tough not to automatically hit the brakes when you see the wall coming at 12-15mph.”

For almost three quarters of a century, Richard C. Rich has provided his knowledge and expertise in the planning and design of parking to thousands of clients throughout the United States, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America. “Dick” (is how he likes to be called), is the owner and founder of Rich & Associates, Inc., a Parking Consulting, Planning, Engineering, and Architectural firm based in Southfield, MI. This year, Rich & Associates is celebrating a big milestone as this is our 55-year anniversary. As part of our celebration we want to acknowledge our founder and one of the nation’s leading parking consultants.

Dick’s career in the parking industry started in 1948 during his freshmen year in college at Marquette University in Wisconsin. Dick took a job at National Garages as a night shift parking attendant for 90 cents an hour at a downtown parking lot to pay his way through school. “I wore myself out running around moving cars,” Dick said, “I often thought there must be an easier way.”  His keen sense of perspective for servicing the needs of the parking lot users allowed him to advanced quickly to a night supervisor’s position where he oversaw 5 parking lots and 2 garages. Dick even held a record and won an award for parking the most cars in a single day in a lot that held 40 spaces, (a total of 10 rows that were 4 cars deep) in which he ran more than 200 cars that day! When National Garages (the firm that employed Dick) decided they needed to establish a design department, they looked to him to start it. National Garages decision to move Dick to Detroit to start the design department was influenced by Dicks newly obtained engineering degree from Marquette University, and all of the previous design contributions he had made during his time of employment. While at National Garages, Dick earned a reputation as one of the industry’s most creative designers and would eventually rise to the position of Chief Designer at the firm.

However, in the early 1960’s the thought of becoming an entrepreneur began to appeal to him. While he achieved great success at National Garages, he knew that he would have much more creative freedom if he struck out on his own. So, in 1963, ten years after beginning his career with National Garages, he started his own parking design and planning firm, Richard C. Rich & Associates (now Rich & Associates), in Detroit.

Almost from the beginning, Rich & Associates was a national success, working with some of the architectural industry’s giants. Dick and his team were entrusted with the design of some of the country’s most notable parking structures. Rich & Associates was in the vanguard of the parking industry, responsible for some of the largest garages built at that time, and one of the first firms to see the benefits of mixed-use structures. Under Dick’s leadership, the firm pioneered a comprehensive parking needs and feasibility study approach that has resulted in the successful completion of more than 500 studies across the country.

Dick was also an innovator when it came to parking management.  In the late 1970s, he became the first and the only parking consultant to privately finance, develop and operate his own parking structure. He used his ownership opportunity as a platform for testing new parking technologies, products, and design ideas to improve the firm’s clients projects. Dick was the first in the country to use neon signage as an experiment in a garage in Des Moines Iowa which was published in the Des Moines press as one of the garages with the best signage in the City. Dick was also able to use his own facility to compare new lighting fixtures which allowed the firm to be on the cutting edge of new technology.

After 65 years in the business and 55 years at the head of Rich & Associates, Dick Rich continues to go strong. He is proud of the fact that there are thousands of garages in use throughout North America and overseas that he and his firm had a critical role in designing. The journey we have been on, reminiscing over our past 55-year, has been a melding and culmination of Dick’s and his firm’s work.

The firm’s thorough grasp of the theoretical and practical applications in parking design is born from a combination of designing more than 3,000 parking garages and the firm’s private development and management of its own parking facilities. Dick has over the years, successfully built and held together a truly world class team of parking designers and consultants at Rich & Associates. Fostering what at one time was an evolutionary environment that has morphed into a genuinely revolutionary, 21st Century state-of-the-art parking, planning, design, and engineering firm. “As far as I’m concerned, this is the most exciting industry there is,” says Dick. “Transportation is constantly evolving, and there is no end to the opportunities we have for new discoveries. Why would I give this up?”

Questions:
1) What is your fondest memory of the last 55-years at R&A?

“Meeting Minoru Yamasaki and being his consultant for about 5 years until his death and establishing a relationship that allowed me to continue our work with the Yamasaki firm.”

2) What is your funniest memory of the last 55-years at R&A?

“There was a parking operator that contacted me who had about 10-15 locations in the city that we did some consulting for to help improve his parking lots and to improve his income. We asked for his financial figures to input them into the computer and after we ran all of the material that he sent us, it was obvious that he wasn’t making any money. I called him and his response was,” “I sent you the wrong set of books, those are the ones we pay taxes on, there’s a factor of 3 you’ve got to multiply all the numbers by!”

3) What is the greatest lesson you have learned in the parking industry?

“Security for the cars and for the patrons is number 1. Whatever you do you’ve got to make it easy on the patron, and make sure he or she is safe and secure while in the garage. That’s why we are an advocate, starting in the mid ‘80s, of TV monitoring of our own parking structures and recommending it to all of our clients. One of our own structures in Des Moines had sound monitors and TV cameras. If there was a loud scream in any one aisle the cameras adjacent to that row and in that row were capturing video so we could see exactly what was going on.”

4) What is your favorite place that you’ve traveled to for work in the last 55-years?

“Cali, Columbia. The first project I did down there was in the late ‘60s, I did a parking garage where we convinced them to put a 12-story apartment house on top of the garage. The owner became one of my best friends and our relationship continued for more than 3 decades until his death.”

5) What is the best advice you have received and the best advice you can give to somebody in this industry?

“Do the best you can with what you’ve got & pay attention to the little details.”

Sources

* The Detroit Free Press

*The Parking Professional

City of Warren, MI. Civic Center Parking Garage

In 2005, Rich & Associates had the honor to work as parking consultants and structural engineers to Neumann Smith Architecture on a 710-space parking garage as part of the new Civic Center development for the City of Warren, MI. Not only did the Warren Civic Center project win a 2008 AIA Michigan Honor Award, it marked the first parking garage project that Rich & Associates designed as consultants to Neumann Smith.

The new landmark Civic Center lines the east edge of a new city square park consisting of formal green space, a fountain/skating rink, and a pavilion building. The modern glass and brick design recalls the City’s roots as an important industrial, research, and development town, whose great icon was the GM Tech Center.  The new building, which features a 7-story clock tower, creates a powerful visual “bookend” to the Vehicle Engineering Center, the tallest building on the GM Tech Center campus.

The new 710-car parking structure abuts the City Hall/Library and is located so that it can also serve the neighboring police and court buildings and any future mixed-use developments.  The scale and mass were designed to maximize the level of user service, to minimize the use of valuable land, and to be recessive to the City Hall/Library building and future development.

Since the completion of this project, we have had the privilege of collaborating with Neumann Smith on the design of eight successful parking garage projects including the multi-award winning ‘Z’ Deck in downtown Detroit.

Veterans Administration Regional Office and Parking Structure

Jesse Brown West Side Medical Center – Chicago, Il.

In 1996, the US Department of Veterans Affairs issued a request for proposal for the private development of a 1,000-car parking facility (surface parking and structure).  It was issued under the newly adopted Enhanced Use Lease program, where the private developer was encouraged to provide other revenue generating uses within the structure to help subsidize the cost.  MEDPark, Rich & Associates’ private parking development affiliate, determined that the parking project would not be feasible without subsidies due to the DVA policy of free patient parking.

Despite the lack of feasibility, MEDPark and Rich & Associates submitted a proposal response offering alternative development scenarios.  MEDPark was selected over eight other submittals. Over the next four years the team and DVA met on several occasions to finalize a successful development approach that satisfied all parties. During this time, the project program grew to include a 1,600-space parking structure and 100,000 square foot office building for the Veterans Administration Regional Office.

MEDPark served as the developer responsible for the design and delivery of the entire project.  While Rich & Associates provided architectural and engineering services for the garage, MEDPark hired SmithGroup JJR to design the office building. Our team was responsible for the entire project providing project management services, guaranteeing the final cost and project schedule. We administered the design and construction process and negotiated the final GMP with our design/build partners Walbridge.

Completed in 2005, both buildings were successfully completed on time and under budget. Today, MEDPark Management is operating both facilities.

*Richard C. Rich, President/Founder of Rich & Associates & MEDPark, Inc. pictured second from right

Central Market Street Mixed‐Use Development – Moscow, Russia.

Rich & Associates was involved in the planning and functional design of a 450-space multi-level below grade parking structure in Moscow, Russia. As a consultant to the development team, we worked closely with their design team to produce this new structure.

Our role as parking consultants involved preparing a functional design package to be used by the owner’s architect in the final design and engineering of the parking garage portion of the overall development. This functional package was essentially the detailed layout and design of the parking floor plans including grading of the floor and ramps, stall layout, traffic circulation and markings, signage, and entry and exit details.

We studied numerous alternative design concepts based on the previous programming and preliminary design prepared by the architect. We also studied alternative mechanical parking structure systems versus conventional parking garage. Our mission was to develop functional plan that improved the efficiency of the traffic flow and efficiency of construction to reduce the project costs.

Since our work on this project, we were retained by another Russian developer to work with them and their lead architect SOM, on the design of a 2,000-space parking garage to serve a large mixed-use hotel, office and residential development in Moscow.

Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion Parking Garage, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI.

Fast-forward 20 years to mid 2018, Rich & Associates recently completed design of a 700-space parking garage that will serve the new Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. As parking consultants to lead architects SmithGroup JJR, Rich & Associates is providing parking consulting, design and engineering services. Currently under construction, the parking garage features a 2,000 sf of ground level space that will house medical data file storage, provisions for future retail space, a receiving area and ambulance bays on the ground level.

*Rendering provided by SmithGroup JJR

And They’re Off!

As many of you know this Saturday, May 5th is the 144th annual Kentucky Derby! In honor of this historical event, we’ve decided to look at some facts about the race, the way horses were originally used as a mode of transportation, when transportation evolved from a horse to a vehicle and how the vehicles created a demand for the parking garages and studies we are involved with today!

The Kentucky Derby, first held in 1875 at Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, is the longest-running sports event in the United States. The mint julep, the Derby’s traditional drink, is wildly overpriced at $11 a pop. Connoisseurs of bourbon consider it a waste of good whiskey. On Derby Day the infield will hold around 80,000 revelers, making it Kentucky’s third-largest city, behind Lexington and Louisville. The 1¼-mile distance has been standard since 1896. The first 21 Derby’s were contested at 1½ miles.

The domestication of the horse dates back to around 6000-5500 BC and has had a significant impact of many aspects of human history and culture. Although there is much debate about the history of domestic horses, research indicates that horses were first domesticated by the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan. Primarily between 1815 – 1915 Concorde buggies were a primary mode of short-distance, personal transportation, while horseback riding in towns and rural areas was much less common.  Buggies required at least crudely graded main roadways, where horses could go almost anywhere. The growing use of buggies for local travel expanded, along with stage lines and railroads for longer trips.

In cities and towns, horse-drawn railed vehicles gave carriage to poor workers and the lower middle class. The upper middle class used buggies, as did farmers, while the rich had the more elegant 4-wheel carriages for local use. In the late 19th century, bicycles became another factor in urban personal transport. In the United States, hundreds of small companies produced buggies, and their wide use helped to encourage the grading and graveling of main rural roads and actual paving in towns which provided all-weather passage within and between larger towns. By the early 1910s, the number of automobiles had surpassed the number of buggies, but the use of buggies continued well into the 1920s in out of the way places.

As more and more people bought cars, the need for a place to park grew immensely. The first ‘parking garage’ dates back to the early 1900’s and doesn’t look like most garages we are familiar with today. Parking garages in this time were multi-car buildings which often mimicked the look of homes or multi-story commercial buildings. Sometimes parking garages were horse stables, where they would charge the same for parking a car as they did for stalling a horse. The first multi-story parking garage that we know of, was built in 1918.

The early parking garages were staffed with parking attendants who would park the car. In some cases, the car was placed on a platform with car lifts and would automatically be moved to an available parking space.

In the 1950’s there was a construction boom when it comes to parking garages with self-service parking garages. There were several innovations in the design and construction self-service parking garages. Most of what we see today in North America are self-service parking garages. However advancements in technology are leading to increased construction of automated facilities.

Sources:

http://www.parking-net.com/parking-industry-blog/a-short-description-of-the-history-of-parking-garages

kentuckyderby.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_and_buggy