{"id":10165,"date":"2012-02-02T19:33:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T00:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=10165"},"modified":"2022-05-26T06:23:52","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T11:23:52","slug":"gargantuan-garages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/gargantuan-garages\/","title":{"rendered":"Gargantuan Garages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Were is the world’s largest parking garage? I’m not sure why that came to mind, as if I can ever figure out why I fixate on such oddities. It’s a tougher question than I imagined. I wanted to ponder this from the perspective of a single stand-alone structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of the sources I consulted happened to mix-and-match designs, making it particularly difficult to compare. There are large surface lots without garages, multiple garages strung together, or single facilities with disconnected surface lots and\/or garages. Often sources count all of these varied parking space towards a bottom-line total. All I wanted was the largest single<\/em> garage. I didn’t care about any of the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Parking<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I kept running across claims that Dubai World Central<\/a> in the United Arab Emirates will someday have 100,000 parking spaces. Great for them. That would be the total available spaces (not a single garage) and it doesn’t exist yet, so it’s disqualified. I’m not sure if the project got caught-up in the global economic situation or if it’s still a work in progress. I may return to this again someday if or when it’s completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another location was mentioned by almost every source, the West Edmonton Mall<\/a> in Alberta, Canada. It definitely has 20,000 spaces. It’s not all contained within a single building (map<\/a>) so I eliminated it from further consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best source I discovered during my investigation was a 2008 article in Forbes<\/a>. That helped me narrow down the choices. I’ll propose the single largest parking structures with 10,000 or more spaces and of course I’ll invite others to offer alternatives or additions. I’m less certain of my choices than usual. Even so I think they’re all pretty amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Sea-Tac Airport, Washington<\/h2>\n\n\n\n