Parking Technology for Commercial Office Building
Property owners & managers: do you have a multi-tenant office building in your portfolio? If so, this case study on ParqEx providing parking technology for a commercial office building is just for you!
Transwestern, a national real estate company and ParqEx’s client, owns several properties across the United States. For example, the Evanston Metro Center downtown Evanston, Illinois, is a Class A multi-tenant office building in which ParqEx has installed their technology.
The Situation
The Evanston Metro Center at 1007 Church has suites ranging from 1,250 to 15,000 square feet with secure parking, located across the street, included for all of their employees. Like many other properties, parking challenges arose almost immediately for the Transwestern property management team. They struggled with three key parking-related issues: providing access, maximizing parking income, and enforcing parking.
The first challenge was the cost and hassle of providing transponders (clickers) to employees so they could access the parking garage. Every time a new tenant signed a lease, new clickers would have to be ordered. Then, on the opposite side of the lease, the management team scrambled to collect all the clickers issued to that tenant and their employees when a tenant’s lease ended. This costly and cumbersome process was something they wanted to fix.
The second challenge was to maximize the potential of income generated from these parking spaces. Even when the building was at total capacity, several parking spaces were unused. Property owners were very eager to find parkers for these underutilized parking spaces. Yet, the property management team did not have enough resources to spend on leasing any available parking on the property. Additionally, the few external renters they had required a lot of effort to manage and collect money. Consequently, adding more renters seemed too overwhelming, and most of the garage sat empty regularly.
The last challenge was the proper enforcement of the parking garage. This garage is located across the street from the office building, which meant that any enforcement efforts required staff to leave the office for a significant amount of time. The team also had no clear idea which vehicle belonged in the garage. As a result, there was frequent abuse of the parking garage by unauthorized parkers.
The Solution
For Evanston Metro Center, with its varying issues they wanted to tackle, ParqEx needed to perform a thorough site survey and interview the Transwestern team about the current parking situation. Through these efforts, ParqEx determined that this property needed its full-service platform. This includes ParqEx’s: Marketplace, Access +, and Enforcer.
First, ParqEx installed their proprietary IoT solution, Access +, on the garage door to streamline access management. With this technology on-site, the management team only needed to add or remove names from a list rather than manage all those clickers. Now, authorized users have to simply use the ParqEx app on their phones to enter the garage.
Access + also helped make renting out available parking to external renters much easier. ParqEx placed many open parking spots on their Marketplace platform, which enabled all non-tenant renters to access these spaces. The payment was also simplified in that it was processed in advance when renters booked short or long-term rentals on the app.
Lastly, in terms of enforcement, ParqEx trained staff on using the ParqEx Enforcer tool. With the Enforcer app, all details for the vehicles on the property were already populated. Therefore, with a better sense of which cars were authorized on-site, the property management team could enforce their parking and issue citations & violations straight from the app.
The Result
ParqEx’s parking technology for a commercial building was incredibly successful at the Evanston Metro Center. Our parking solutions have helped Transwestern gain more value from their parking assets with much less management effort. Through Access +, clickers were no longer needed for any tenant and allowed the Marketplace to generate additional revenue by encouraging external renters to park their vehicles on the property. Lastly, the staff now can enforce the parking garage quickly and efficiently.
On top of significant time and cost savings, the property saw an additional $57k added operating income through Marketplace. Moreover, with Access +, the property saw 33k seamless garage entry and exits. The cherry on top, management had 0 hours of added effort regarding their parking management.
“ParqEx has 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)
Reach Out!
ParqEx is a technology platform that unlocks the hidden value sitting idle in privately-owned parking spaces. Much like the Evanston Metro Center, with ParqEx, property owners and managers can increase income, reduce operating costs, simplify management, and provide value-adding amenities for tenants and staff.
Download the Evanston Metro Center case study and contact us to learn more about our parking technology for commercial buildings!
