Rise of the Machines: Robot Garage Will Be North America’s Largest

One time someone dropped a silver piece of chewing gum wrapper, and it fell by one of the sites between the floor and one of the pallets and got stuck in those brushes. When the system was being checked for safety, that came back as an error, and we physically had to go there to see what was causing the error. The process I just explained is no more than a five-to-seven-minute process.

What about terrorism or bomb threats?   

One of my first concepts after 9/11 was to develop a system with bomb-detection equipment. We have worked somewhat with Smiths Detection in concept to marry bomb-detection equipment with our system. We know it can work, but unfortunately the pricing is extremely high on the Smiths Detection portion. But it’s absolutely doable, and we have a prototype onboard that will show how it can operate.

We have reached out to Homeland Security, because we thought it would be great to have at embassies. We are talking about doing something like this even at airports. At Rockefeller Center, a guy goes with a mirror underneath the car. That is the most ridiculous thing—there’s nothing you can ever find with something like that. There are various concepts, but you need governments and municipalities that are willing to pay for this technology.

What can Brooklynites anticipate in terms of the park itself? 

The original park design was conceptualized with Hargreaves Associates, which was hired by the EDC [Economic Development Corporation]. It is our job to now take those designs and create the working drawings. We have a great team of landscapers and arborists working with us to execute the plan.

I’m advocating to get approval for the lighting at the park to be 100 percent off the grid. We can do lighting using solar energy and battery backups that will be warranted for 10 years, and we need to get both types of technologies out into the public. Can you imagine doing everything green, yet wasting electricity for the lights when there’s technology we can use today that can help us be off the grid?

How did the launch of Automotion in 2003 come about? 

Automotion Parking Systems started because there was a development issue in terms of a site that American Development was involved in, which was a plot of land with parked vehicles. Our initial intention was not to do anything other than build condos on the site. We realized, after buying the lot and while in the process of developing, that there was a parking need that couldn’t be met. I was looking for alternatives, and my search eventually ended up starting Automotion Parking Systems with a designing system that would work in the U.S. [and] had significant reliabilities. We realized that this technology is really a development tool, and it can be [used] elsewhere for various developers and buyers who have similar issues and problems on how to enhance their projects.

While the guys at Automotion understand how to manipulate the machines, how to design the machines—when it comes to dealing with specific issues of how to gain additional space and what to do with it, I will spend my time as needed with various stakeholders.

What’s the construction schedule for the project?

The environmental remediation is starting at the beginning of August. The official groundbreaking will begin when the buildings that are there are removed, so we’re probably looking at a number of months before the official groundbreaking occurs. There is a deadline—officially it goes out to 2019. Our [own] deadline is 2016. There’s no reason why we should extend this any further than we have to. We’re fast-tracking what we need to do here.