Company behind parking carousel wants to make them publicly accessible in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- A new parking option in Pittsburgh might take you back to a warm summer night at the carnival.

"It got us to stop and take pictures of it," said East Liberty resident Lindsey Kaine.

It's tall, tech-based and catches people's attention.

"We were like, 'why is there a car up that high?'" said South Hills resident Marcella Day.

Day and Kaine passed by and immediately stopped to take pictures.

"And then we just had to figure out how this carousel of cars works," Kaine said.

KDKA-TV's Meghan Schiller got an up-close look at the new parking carousel spinning in the Strip District. She watched as a man came home from work, scanned his app, drove in and watched the automated carousel lift his Jeep away. 

Diallo Powell, the co-founder and CEO of Stak Mobility, said if we're looking for space, just look up.

"It's what we've done with residences and offices for a really long time in cities, right? Why wouldn't we do the same thing with our cars if we can?" Powell said. 

Only people who live in the apartment building can use the one on Mulberry Street, but Pittsburgh could soon see a public one Downtown soon.

"It's something in the works. It's in the the early stages, but that is the goal, to start to deploy these in in places that will be publicly accessible," Powell said. 

Powell hopes to break ground sometime this year. Each spot does offer a charger for electric vehicles, and you essentially order your car when you need to retrieve it. 

"We have a queuing function so that people know their spot in line, so similar to waiting for an Uber, if you have to wait 3 minutes, if you have to wait 5 minutes," he said. 

And Powell said if something goes wrong, he tells KDKA-TV his company's always watching. 

"So, if someone trips a sensor and their session aborts or something like that, we can chat, we can communicate with the end user and we have the ability to actually bring their car down remotely," he said. 

Powell added a fun fact, saying this technology was created here in Pittsburgh 100 years ago by Westinghouse Corporation.

"We could find images in 1920s of experiments being run with this with model Ts in East Pittsburgh," he said.