The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) currently owns five public parking garages in the downtown core and is exploring a possible pilot to repurpose some portion of these underutilized assets as a micro-delivery hub to support the city’s goals for sustainable, safe, and efficient goods movement. This is a unique opportunity to explore the feasibility of repurposing space in a parking garage so goods movement companies can unload and/or consolidate deliveries and transition to smaller, cleaner vehicles for nearby deliveries. There are three SmartPark garages being considered for this pilot, all in the downtown urban core of Central City. They include the Naito & Davis location at 33 NW Davis St, the 10th & Yamhill location at 730 SW 10th Avenue and the 3rd & Alder location at 620 SW 3rd Avenue. All locations have a small number of EV charging stations already installed and ground floor retail that may be able to be activated. The concept of repurposing under-utilized parking garage space has been tested in Europe with projects such as London’s Last Mile Logistics Hub that transformed 39 car parking spaces in an underutilized parking garage into a hub for Amazon logistics that took 85 vehicles off the roads each day and replaced them with e-cargo bike delivery. This will be one of the first projects to test this business model in the United States. The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to gather data to assist the City to better understand the availability of suppliers in the marketplace, and approaches and solutions to the contemplated project. Respondents are invited to submit a response to this RFI by addressing the following: Potential opportunities for a possible pilot, including what types of physical designs, ground-level retail, and partnerships should be considered. Please answer the questions below to provide us with feedback on this novel set of ideas.
