City council has approved a plan to build a 338-stall automated parking garage in downtown Calgary.

The unmanned parkade will use computer technology to lift and move vehicles into parking spots inside a multi-storey glass and steel structure.

"One of the things that a lot of folks who study this extensively say is that all parking structures have to move to this. It's so much more efficient in terms of land use," said Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

"Ramps take up enormous amounts of land. Two to three times as many cars can park in the same size parking garage."

The plan would see a group of rundown heritage buildings along the Seventh Avenue C-Train tracks — between First and Centre Streets — restored to house the parking facility.

Calgary-based Heritage Property Corporation, the private firm behind the project, said on its website it "plans to delicately restore each individual building and facade to maximize the block’s early 20th-century splendour."

Many details of the plan still need to be worked out, such as how cars will get in and out of the back alley, which will be the main entrance.

However, Nenshi says the project will revitalize one of the least attractive blocks in the city's core.