Reimagining the Parking Garage

LeBlanc: “The way to look at it is multi-use programming for the short term and future-use or next-use programming for the long term—today it’s a parking garage, but in 25 years it could be a beautiful office building.”

LOS ANGELES—Architects and designers are now looking at creating more flexible and sustainably built structures that lend themselves to alternative uses and have an eye toward smarter future redevelopment, Boston-based Utile Inc. principal Michael LeBlanc tells GlobeSt.com. LeBlanc will be speaking at NAIOP‘s upcoming office conference here, O.CON, on the “Parking Garage of the Future.” We spoke with him exclusively about how parking garages are changing to accommodate shifting needs in the short and long term.

GlobeSt.com: Why do you believe parking structures need to evolve?

LeBlanc: The idea was a little derivative of a studio that I was teaching at Northeastern on next-use buildings. We were taking a look at buildings with nine lives, so to speak—buildings that don’t want to die, but instead last many hundreds of years and accommodate many different types of programs. These are exemplary types of buildings in terms of resiliency and durability through different types of weather and other elements. What started off as textile mills, sugar plants and other uses are now law offices, architecture firms, etc. The most sustainable buildings were those that needed to be rebuilt the fewest times, since there’s an enormous amount of energy that goes into tearing down and rebuilding.