An artist’s rendering shows the proposed garage on Weybosset Street, where cars are stored in a Ferris wheel-like mechanism.

Rendering courtesy of Friedrich St. Florian Architect

PROVIDENCE — A Florida company is proposing what may soon be the strangest part of the Providence skyline: a pair of 13-story, translucent parking towers that operate like Ferris wheels, loading cars at the ground level and then moving them high up into the structure for storage.

The Weybosset Street project would be the first public parking garage of its kind in the continental United States, said Douglas Dodd, chief operations officer of Mechanical Vertical Parking Inc., the West Palm Beach, Fla., company backing the project.

“We picked Providence to be the introduction of this to the United States,” Dodd said.

He believes that such an unorthodox project is perfectly suited for a packed downtown like Providence’s, where space is at a premium and parking is difficult. The towers may look curious, but they will serve as their own draw — it can be hard to ignore cars rotating through a transparent building high in the sky.

“They love them. Everybody loves it. The first question I get is do they fall down? And of course they don’t. But people actually like to watch them go around. It’s like standing around and watching a Ferris wheel go around,” Dodd said.

The developer’s proposal envisions that at night, the towers would be “lit from inside, they will glow like beacons in the city’s nightscape.”

The project would cost $5 million, and would take roughly three months to construct, Dodd said.

The plan received conceptual approval from Providence’s Downcity District Design Review Committee Monday night, and may return for final approval next month. Dodd hopes to have the structure open for business by the summer.

The technology behind these structures is simple, Dodd said, and was patented in the 1960s, but while he said there are thousands of these parking structures abroad, there is only one commercial parking garage of this type in the United States, in Honolulu. The company hopes to use Providence as a proving ground to show other cities that these projects are workable.

“We picked Rhode Island because it’s the toughest state in the country for regulatory, building, and fire codes,” he said. “We’re using Rhode Island to help us get through the rest of the country.”

The structure, at 87 Weybosset St., would be built on the site of a 34-space surface parking lot owned by William J. Piccerelli, Dodd said.

It would feature 216 total spaces between the two towers, divided into six long, vertical pods holding 36 cars each. The two towers would be set back from the street, and a three-story liner building would be erected on Weybosset Street, with retail stores.

Unlike a car elevator, which uses a single bay to lift cars to a holding area, the machine in this case is the holding area, and the cars are stored on the spokes of Dodd’s Ferris wheel.

While a Ferris wheel may be an apt comparison for the mechanism, it is not an exact likeness: the machine’s structure is oblong, rather than circular, to allow the cars to fit in the tall, thin towers.

Drivers would enter the structure from Weybosset Street, and exit their vehicle in a central receiving area after driving into one of the six bays. After exiting the car, the chain would hoist the car up into the tower, bringing a new pad down into the central receiving area.

The mechanism, powered by a 50-horsepower motor, is fast enough to retrieve a car in under 60 seconds.

“And it’s totally safe — each car is in its own mini-garage, so there’s no theft, there’s no denting the door. And if someone was stupid enough to leave little Johnny or Mary in the car, there are sensors where if movement is found inside the car, the sensor detects that, and brings the car back down to the ground.”

The company plans to rent out 20 to 25 percent of the spaces for monthly parking, at a rate slightly below $200 a month, and leave the rest for daily and event parking.

The proposal had come before the Design Review Committee in September, but was sent back for further work. This time, Providence architect Friedrich St. Florian brought back a redesign that opened up the structure’s vitals for public viewing, and encouraged the committee to view it less like a building and more like a giant machine.

The committee liked what it saw, according to Robert Azar, director of current planning for the city Planning Department.

“The committee had a very favorable reaction to the project. They were encouraged by the design, and I think they were intrigued by the treatment of the mechanism. They liked the idea that you might be able to see a little bit of movement and light and so forth. Some of them even wanted to see a little more of that at the ground level,” he said.

The city has had some concerns about whether the structure would create traffic delays on Weybosset Street. The company has commissioned a report by the Massachusetts engineering firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin that states that the facility should not dramatically increase traffic. The city will now ask its traffic engineer to analyze the impacts.

The project will also need a variance from the city’s zoning board, allowing it to use Weybosset Street as the entrance site.

“I expect that since the DRC has approved it, we will get approval from the zoning board, but that’s just a hopeful thought,” said Anna Prager, a former Rhode Island town planner who is helping shepherd the project through for the developer.

Prager said that she hopes to return to the DRC for final approval next month, and to get started on the project soon after.

The company also has proposals in the works for New York City, Miami, Denver, and the train station at Kingston.

dbarbari@projo.com