Biography

When Mary Smith applied for a job at Walker Consultants fresh out of Purdue, the company's CEO advised against hiring her — predicting she'd quit within a year or two to have babies. Tony Chrest and Frank Transue ignored that advice. Fifty years later, Mary is still at Walker.

It turned out she wasn't destined to be a structural engineer. She was destined to be something the parking industry didn't yet know it needed: its foremost expert in functional design.

Over five decades, Mary developed the Level of Service approach to parking design — a framework that transformed how structures are planned, customizing everything from stall dimensions to turning radii to pedestrian walking distances. She wrote the standards the industry now takes for granted.

She co-authored three editions of Parking Structures: Planning, Design, Construction, Maintenance and Repair. She wrote the second and third editions of Shared Parking. She shaped the industry's understanding of ADA accessible parking, autonomous vehicles, and EV charging.

And along the way, she planned and designed some of the most complex parking facilities in the world — including structures at Disneyland and Universal Studios Florida, where she designed a 10,000 space deck to be able to park one car per second.

In 2018, she received the IPMI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, the NPA Harwood Leadership and Legends Award. She is the only person to have received both.

Please welcome Mary Spiess Smith into the Parking Hall of Fame.