Developer Readies 60-Story Condo Tower For Flying Cars
When air taxis start flying in the next 10 to 15 years, CEO of Boca Raton-based Royal Palms Cos. Daniel Kodsi said this Miami residential tower will be ready to handle the traffic.
Paramount Miami Worldcenter, a 500-plus-unit tower underway with more than 70% of its units already sold, is preparing for the day when flying cars come.
Kodsi told the Wall Street Journal that to create a skyport at the Paramount Miami Worldcenter, which will rise 60 stories when completed in 2019, two amenities will be flexible enough to be repurposed.
For one, the rooftop swimming pool will have a hydraulic lift that raises the bottom of the pool to form a 3K SF landing pad. Also, a space designed to be an observatory when the tower opens can become a 1,400 SF sky lobby, complete with a doorman for residents to wait for their air taxis.
Currently at least a dozen companies are working to develop flying cars, which are more formally known as vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. Last year, Uber Technologies asserted that it will start a VTOL ride-sharing service in LA and DFW by 2023.
According to a 2016 Uber white paper on the potential of VTOLs, on-demand aviation has the potential to radically improve urban mobility.
"Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground," the paper Besides the potential to accommodate air taxis, other amenities at the property include pool cabanas starting at $295K, the country's first outdoor soccer field in a high-rise development, tennis courts, a boxing studio and an indoor basketball court.
