Portable Parking Lots

Los Angeles, one of the most auto-clogged cities in the world, is trying a new solution for its traffic trauma: a portable parking lot. The product of a local firm called Portable Parking Structures, Inc., the lot is actually a three-level open garage that looks as if it were built with an oversize Erector set. The structure is bolted together from steel beams and prefab concrete slabs. It can be assembled quickly on temporarily unused downtown lots and dismantled within one week when the land must be vacated to make way for a new building.

The recently opened portable at the Los Angeles Civic Center accommodates up to 1,236 cars, and Portable Parking has contracts to build similar structures in San Francisco, St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. J. J. Dreyfuss, the general manager, estimates that the firm will gross $7, 000,000 this year.

The portable parking lots can be built in half as much time and for one-third to one-half as much money as conventional poured-concrete structures. Convenient as they are, they have one drawback. Their appearance-- which is most charitably described as functional--does not do much to improve the esthetics of a neighborhood. But what parking lot does?

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