Garages in the sky

Going up?

Residents at Hamilton Scotts can see their cars from their living rooms.

How do cars get there? The driver leaves the car on a roughly 18-by-9-foot pallet in the basement. A biometric scanner reads the resident's thumbprint and tells the lift system to deliver the car to the unit's en-suite sky garage. The resident rides up in a separate elevator.

To get the car back to street level, the resident goes down to the basement and uses the biometric scanner to activate the car lift.

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Nearly instant service

Designed by Selldorf Architects, 200 Eleventh Avenue allows residents access to New York's first sky garage.

The resident drives to the back of the building into a stainless-steel elevator and turns off the ignition.

In less than a minute, the resident drives out the opposite end of the elevator and parks in the garage adjacent to the unit, no matter what floor.

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Built like a fortress

To minimize noise, the elevator at 200 Eleventh Avenue is located behind two 1-foot-thick walls of concrete, two stairwells and a hallway.

Units in the Chelsea building range from 2,000 to 5,000 square feet and have sold for about $3 million to $32 million.

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Glimpse of the future

The proposed Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., will have a robotic arm that raises a car 3 inches, moving it into a glass-walled elevator cab. The arm then deposits the car and driver into the garage space.

The process will take 45 to 90 seconds.

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Car on call

At Porsche Design Tower, a touch-screen system on the wall will allow residents to call for their cars. It also estimates when the car will be delivered.

The development is scheduled to open in 2016. Units start at 4,800 square feet and cost an average of $5.5 million.

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