Parking Garage

Anyone who has ever tramped through a dim, Escher-esque parking garage in search of a "lost" automobile might welcome an abracadabra technology that could help locate it. But what if that magic involved an array of 24/7 surveillance cameras and was also available to police and auto repossessers? What if it could be tapped by jilted lovers, or that angry guy you accidentally cut off in traffic? Would the convenience be worth the loss of privacy? Those are some of the questions civil libertarians and others are asking as technology capable of spying on motorists and pedestrians is converted to widespread commercial use. Santa Monica Place recently unveiled the nation's first camera-based "Find Your Car" system.

Some of the most extensive damage and loss of life from recent earthquakes in California have occurred in apartment houses where dwellings sit on top of a ground-level parking garage or a storefront. The shaking undermines the bottom floor, causing the buildings to collapse and in some cases to pancake. After years of study and debate, San Francisco on Thursday formally adopted a new law requiring owners to retrofit thousands of these so-called wood-frame soft-story buildings, marking the most sweeping seismic regulations in California in years.

As hired killers slit Pamela Fayed's throat in a Century City parking garage, her "bloodcurdling" screams echoed throughout the structure. Bystanders turned their heads in the direction of the horrific attack, footage from security cameras shows. The only person within earshot who didn't react was the victim's estranged husband who was sitting on a nearby bench "texting on his cellphone, like he doesn't have a care in the world," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said Thursday, moments before sentencing James Fayed to death for the contract killing.

A woman accused of dropping her 7-month-old son from the fourth floor of a parking structure pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday in an Orange County courtroom, a prosecutor said. Sonia Hermosillo, who has been charged with child assault and murder in the 2011 death of her son, was evaluated by three doctors before a judge found her fit to stand trial last year. Her attorney, Jacqueline Goodman, has said that her client suffers from " postpartum psychosis . " Hermosillo drove to Children's Hospital of Orange County on Aug. 22, 2011, and parked her car on the fourth floor of a parking structure, according to prosecutors.

Add this stop to your next walking or driving tour of Helsinki, Finland: Europe's No. 1 parking garage. Stockmann Q-Park in the Finnish capital snagged the top award from the European Parking Assn . The parking area has 600 spaces on three levels and was built as deep as 125 feet beneath Stockmann, the city's landmark shopping center. What makes this parking garage top dog? Tunnels that take drivers off city streets and into the car park, heated ramps that discourage icy build up, charging stations for electric cars (which park for free)

Customers and merchants in the Montrose shopping district won't get a new two-level, $1.2-million parking garage for Christmas. The Glendale City Council on Tuesday decided that it is too late to start the construction project and expect completion by the holiday shopping season beginning Nov. 15. So the council rejected all bids for a construction contract, postponing it until after the New Year.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a $92.5-million financing package Tuesday that includes $2 million to help build a parking structure that merchants have long requested. The package provides financing for a slew of city projects, including another parking garage along Melrose Avenue in West Los Angeles, radios for sanitation trucks, police cars and improvements to the fire and paramedic dispatch system.

The body of an unidentified man was found Sunday in a parking garage near Chinatown in Los Angeles, authorities said. Passersby saw the body on the top floor of the two-story garage on Alpine Street and called authorities shortly before 2 p.m., said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Upon inspecting the man's body, firefighters found signs that his death might be related to a fire, Humphrey said. No further details were available.

A $10.6-million parking garage to be built in Old Pasadena has been approved by the Board of City Directors. Construction on the structure, to be built at 35 S. De Lacey Ave., is scheduled to begin in January. At its regular meeting on Monday, the board decided to defer making a decision on whether to build a second parking structure in the downtown area. That structure, planned for 33 E. Green St.

A man driving into an underground parking garage was ambushed and killed by a gunman, police said Saturday. A witness in the victim's car said the assailant pulled a gun from his waistband and fired into the vehicle, said Sgt. Rolland Cannon of the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Division. The shooting occurred at an apartment complex in the 18300 block of Saticoy Street about 8 p.m. Friday. The victim was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he died.

SAN FRANCISCO - An Alameda County jury Monday convicted a Union City woman of first-degree murder for killing her onetime friend in a hospital parking garage in May 2011, the result of years of jealousy over a man. The attorney representing Giselle Esteban, 28, did not dispute that her client had killed 26-year-old nursing student Michelle Le of San Mateo. But Andrea Auer maintained that Esteban had acted in the heat of passion and should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

Early Thursday morning, rescuers extracted a man who had been trapped in a collapsed Miami parking garage for more than 12 hours -- but had to amputate his legs to do it.  Officials had said getting him out could take days. They had been giving him oxygen and an IV while he remained buried in the rubble. The unidentified man had been in a vehicle when the five-story parking garage at  Miami Dade College   fell pancake-style about 11:40 a.m. Wednesday.  Rescuers decided shortly after midnight that they'd need to amputate his legs above the knee, the Miami Herald reported.

  At least one person was killed when a garage collapsed at a Miami college campus and two workers remain trapped in the rubble, authorities in Florida said Wednesday. More than 100 rescuers descended on the scene and were working feverishly to rescue the two workers trapped inside the garage being built on the campus of Miami-Dade College West, Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue spokeswoman Griselle Marino said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. One worker found inside the fallen garage was pronounced dead at the scene, said Marino, the public affairs manager for the rescue unit.

  [ See update: '1 dead, two still trapped in parking garage collapse' ] More than 100 rescuers on Wednesday rushed to the scene of a partially-built parking garage that collapsed on the campus of a Miami school, trapping workers inside, officials said. Cries for help could be heard from inside the rubble of the structure being built on the campus of Miami-Dade College West, officials said. “We have multiple victims trapped inside,” Cristina Armand, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue, told the Los Angeles Times.

Construction is set to begin Monday on a $200-million apartment and retail complex at one of the busiest intersections in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles. The project called the Vermont is the largest residential development to be built in Los Angeles since the beginning of the latest real estate downturn, J.H. Snyder Development Co. said. The Vermont will rise on two acres at the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. It will house 464 apartments in two towers - one 16 stories and the other 22 - that will rise above a seven-story podium containing stores and a parking garage.

A Chapman University law professor who died after falling from a building may have committed suicide, authorities said Monday. Orange County Supervising Deputy Coroner Daniel Aikin said preliminary findings indicated that Mary Katherine Baird Darmer, 47, took her own life Friday. But an autopsy is still pending and "our investigations are not complete yet," Aikin said. An official cause of death has not been determined, authorities said. According to details released by the coroner's office, Darmer fell from a parking garage in the 19700 block of MacArthur Boulevard in Irvine at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

Part of a Rockville parking garage under construction collapsed, killing at least two workers, injuring one and leaving a fourth missing, fire officials said. Concerns about an additional collapse prompted the evacuation of surrounding buildings, the Fire Department said. A police spokesman said a no-fly zone had been established over the area because authorities do not want helicopters to get caught in the dust flying up or create dangerous downdrafts.

A new parking garage at LAX has added 953 short-term parking spaces to the terminal area. The $18-million, four-level building is near Terminal 6, used by Continental, United and others. It is on the site of a garage that was demolished because of earthquake concerns. Parking rates are the same as at other nearby garages: $3 for the first two hours and $1 for each additional hour, with a maximum of $16 for 24 hours.

As hired killers slit Pamela Fayed's throat in a Century City parking garage, her "bloodcurdling" screams echoed throughout the structure. Bystanders turned their heads in the direction of the horrific attack, footage from security cameras shows. The only person within earshot who didn't react was the victim's estranged husband who was sitting on a nearby bench "texting on his cellphone, like he doesn't have a care in the world," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said Thursday, moments before sentencing James Fayed to death for the contract killing.

UCLA has chosen a new site for an on-campus hotel and conference center, abandoning a controversial plan to demolish the university's faculty club to make way for the new facility, officials said Tuesday. The meeting spaces and 250 guest rooms would replace a multilevel garage at the campus center, sparing the faculty club, a 52-year-old structure on the school's eastern edge. The revised plan is also expected to ease concerns about increased traffic in neighborhoods east of UCLA.