Evanston Metro Center Sees Over $57k in Added Operating Income Leveraging ParqEx Tech Solutions

CLIENT PROFILE: EVANSTON METRO CENTER

LOCATION: 1007 Church St., Evanston, IL

The Evanston Metro Center is a Class A, multi-tenant office building located in the downtown area of Evanston, IL – a bustling suburb just north of Chicago. The building, which was designed by world-class architect Helmut Jahn, includes suites in sizes from 1,250 to 15,000 square feet and offers many amenities such as a game room, a courtyard, outdoor terraces, and manned security.

The property is managed by Transwestern, a national real estate company providing agency leasing, property and facilities management, tenant advisory, capital markets, and research services. The Transwestern family of companies comprises a diversified operating, investment and development organization.

Three goals, one-source solution

The first and most critical issue the management team had was the cost and hassle of providing transponders (or “clickers”) to employees so they could access the garage. Each time a new tenant signed a lease clickers would be ordered – with large minimum order sizes, and each time a tenant’s lease ended the team would unsuccessfully scramble to collect the clickers that had been issued. They were eager to find a more cost-effective and less labor-intensive way to manage access rights.

The second major challenge involved the maximization of parking income. Even at full office occupancy, there was a large amount of unused parking capacity that ownership was eager to find customers for. However, there weren’t enough resources on the property management team to spend on leasing up the available parking. In addition, the few external renters they had required a lot of effort to manage and collect monthly rent. Therefore, adding more renters seemed like an overwhelming effort and much of the garage sat empty on a regular basis.

Finally, the third main parking issue at Evanston Metro Center the Transwestern team had was the difficulty they had enforcing proper parking. The garage is located across and down the street from the office building, which meant that any enforcement efforts would require staff to leave their posts in the building for a significant period of time. The team also didn’t have a clear idea which vehicles belonged in the garage at any given time, so as a result there was frequent abuse of the parking area by unauthorized people.

 

 

The solution for Evanston Metro Center

In order to fully understand the issues to be tackled, ParqEx began by performing a thorough site survey and interviewing the Transwestern team about the parking situation. Through these efforts, ParqEx determined that it would add the most value by implementing several of the technology offerings in their full-service platform. To streamline access management at Evanston Metro Center, ParqEx first installed their proprietary IoT solution called Access+ on the garage door. This would then allow the management team to simply add or remove names from a list rather than managing a se of expensive physical items. Authorized users would simply use the ParqEx app on their smartphones to enter the garage.

 

 

“ParqEx delivered for us on both the top and bottom lines. We not only make more from the garage, but we do it with less effort.”

Colleen Shoemaker

Property Manager, Evanston Metro Center

 

 

State-of-the-art access at Evanston Metro Center

Installing Access+ also had the benefit of making it much easier to rent out the available parking. ParqEx placed a large number of spots on their Marketplace to enable them to be rented by non-tenants. Payments would be processed in advance when renters booked short- or long-term rentals on the ParqEx app.

 

 

ParqEx makes training simple

Finally, ParqEx trained property staff on use of their Enforcer tool, which included all details for the vehicles that belonged in the garage.

Control ANY access point

Total, secure access to doors, gates, garages, and more— right from the palm of your hand. Full real-time admin control.

About Access+

Find or list parking spots

Access an exclusive inventory of private parking spots all over the country that you cannot find anywhere else.

About Marketplace

Parking enforcement

Quickly, easily verify vehicles on one or multiple properties, and issue violations instantly.

About Enforcer