The multi-tier car park at Sourabh Tower in Ranchi

Ranchi, June 13: It’s the first high-rise for cars in the state.

The upcoming Sourav Apartment on Bariatu Road in the heart of the capital will have a multi-tier car park, so far seen only in metros or on movie screens.

A sea change from conventional ground parking, which, due to the acute space crunch and increasing vehicle density, has lost favour with urban planners and architects the world over.

The six-storied car tower will have a capacity to park 12 cars, two on each floor. At a cost of over Rs 25 lakh, the hi-tech car park has been designed by a Korean company customised to requirement. Mumbai-based Ram Ratna Group, a pioneer in promoting car towers in India, has installed it in the state capital.

Building owner Surendra Kumar Sarawgi, also the head of Jokhiram Pharmaceuticals, said the idea behind introducing this concept in the state capital was to show people (read government as well as builders and others in realty) how one could build a state-of-the-art parking facility for four-wheelers using minimum space.

“We first saw such a parking system in Jaipur last year and decided a car tower would be perfect for Ranchi, which suffers from parking space crunch. Through some business associates we came to know that there was only one agency in India based in Mumbai, which did this kind of work. We contacted them and our idea finally took shape,” said Sarawgi.

He added that the advantage was extracting maximum use of space.

“In a conventional parking system, we would have needed at least a 72ft floor area to park 12 cars. Here, we need ground space for only two cars. The rest are stacked up vertically,” he added.

The car tower has two sections that are inter-connected with a hydraulic pulley, he explained.

“At one side of the tower, a computer-operated console is fixed to feed commands. The function is the same as that of a lift. To park the car, one has to drive it on to the ramp at the bottom of the tower. As soon as the floor selection is made, there are sidebars attached to pillars to secure the car on all sides. The ramp then takes the car to the selected floor,” said the entrepreneur, adding the entire tower would rotate in a cylindrical position.