Former luxury lodge owner now selling car stackers

He served vodka martinis to the rich and famous, but Bob Haswell has now turned his sights on something a little more lofty.

A director of Car Parking Solutions, Mr Haswell is selling the idea of stacked car parking.

Parking systems which can do anything from squeeze two cars into a one car space or up to 100 cars in a car tower.

But it wasn't always that way. For many years, Mr Haswell owned and managed the luxury Lake Rotoroa Lodge, specialising in trout fishing for the rich and the famous.

To name just a few, Mr Haswell hosted actors Jessica Tandy, Liam Neeson, Robert Wagner and Viggo Mortensen, as well as members of the White House.

He had been the youngest Bank of New Zealand bank manager in New Zealand, based in Wellington, when he and a couple of partners got the chance to repair and open the lodge.

After 20 years, Mr Haswell said he'd had enough of living in an isolated area and "pouring coffee and vodka martinis for rich Americans at midnight and listening to their fishing stories".

He picked up the idea for the new business from his travels overseas promoting the lodge and from frustration at not being able to find car parks in Wellington.

"I just thought there had to be market potential for something like this in New Zealand and no one else was doing it."

In January, British businessman Richard Johnson spent £120,000 (NZ$308,000) for a plot of land measuring 5m by 2.5m in central London, thought to be the most expensive parking bay sold in the city.

In Auckland, people were paying up to $60,000 to own a car parking space and the problem was spreading to Wellington, Mr Haswell said.

"So, if you've got the opportunity to do something above that car space, if you've got the height, imagine the value."

So far, the company has completed five projects across Auckland, Hamilton and Nelson. It has another 25 more projects on the books.

Technology and computers are imported from German company Wohr, which has been making and installing systems since 1959. Car Parking Solutions does the design and project management. Grayson Engineering, a 50 per cent shareholder, makes the structural steel for the stackers and installs the stackers which range from $10,000 for a two-car unit, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The two-year-old company employs seven people. The value of projects on its books is $1.5 million to $2 million.

Like all the stackers, one in Wellington's Oriental Parade has been designed specifically for the job. It is a pit system which carries cars underground and fits eight cars into four spaces and can be operated by the owners themselves.

Mr Haswell said the biggest problem had been getting resource consent .

- nzpa