By Ebby Zachariah and Chris Perry

Over the past 20 years mixed-use development has become a staple of urban development in Canadian cities. It’s easy to see its appeal for developers and property owners. By combining several different use cases within a single development, developers and owners can benefit from a variety of potential revenue sources. And the diversity of uses can provide stability because when one sector slows down there will be one or more other uses remaining to pick up the slack.

Typically, owners and developers—and urban planners, for that matter—view mixed use solely in the traditional context of a development combining parking, and then some mix of retail, commercial, residential, and/or entertainment development. But there’s another form of mixed-use development that’s worth considering: parking. Yes, just parking.

As parking professionals, we instinctively understand how a development that revolves solely around parking can be an example of mixed-use. Most parking facilities serve multiple user groups. These groups have different needs, use parking assets differently, and may pay different rates. This is true of commercial, residential, and even institutional development with parking assets.

When parking owners start to think about their parking assets in this context, it opens up a whole new world of revenue and tenant amenity opportunities.

A Whole New Ballgame: Parking Management Technology

Until recently, it wasn’t possible to manage parking assets effectively and efficiently when there were multiple use cases. Parking had to be treated as an afterthought at best—and a throw-in at worst—because parking management wasn’t automated. It was just too costly and time-consuming to manage different parking use cases by hand.

With the emergence of parking management software platforms, however, owners can now manage each user group differently, providing access to specific areas of a parking facility, offering access at various times, and even allowing them to charge different rates to different users. This presents extraordinary financial and tenant amenity opportunities to owners and developers.

Before we discuss the different ways that developers and owners can benefit from managing their parking assets with parking management technology, let’s first look at how it works. The heart of any parking management system is the software that runs it. The best platforms can be customized to allow owners and developers to address their unique parking management needs, as well as the unique needs of their tenants and customers. The software stores information about each parking user’s parking needs to build an individual use case for that user. The use case determines how the parking can be utilized, managing things like when and where the vehicle owner can park; whether they will be charged and, if so, how much; and whether the owner has access to a guest pass and, if so, how much they will be charged for each pass. The software should also have a robust accounting element that will automatically collect parking fees, transfer those fees to the appropriate bank accounts, calculate tax requirements, and provide accounting and tax reports to both the owner and the tenant.

There’s also a hardware component. Typically, parking entry and egress is monitored by license plate recognition (LPR) technology. When tenants or visitors drive into a parkade or parking lot, the LPR cameras record the license plate information and associate the parking stay with an account. The same happens when the car leaves. Once the stay is over, the systems determines whether a parking fee is indicated and automatically charges the appropriate account. If the vehicle has a permit, the system associates the stay with that permit.

How It Works: A Deeper Dive

Now let’s look at specific types of parking facilities and how parking management technology works to manage different use cases.

Residential developments typically offer permit parking, with tenants provided one or more parking spaces as part of their lease agreements. The process is relatively straightforward in this case. The system merely monitors incoming and outgoing traffic and associates the vehicles with the appropriate resident permit.

Residential complex owners also commonly provide guest parking passes to tenants. Historically, this has meant giving guests paper passes that can be left of the dashboards of visitors’ cars to alert enforcement personnel that the car is authorized to parking there. This low-tech approach limits how much you can do with guest parking.

However, using parking management technology allows you to manage guest parking much more closely and creatively. Owners can determine how many guest passes tenants can have on a given day, week, month, quarter, or year—really any period of time. The system can also manage when during the day guests can use the parking. The technology also makes it easy to monetize guest parking. For instance, owners can charge a fee for each guest pass, which can automatically be added to the tenant’s monthly rent bill. Of course, the system can also automatically collect the guest parking fee and distribute the fees to the appropriate bank account or accounts. The system can be set up to provide regular reports so the owner or parking operator can keep track of how guest parking passes are being utilized.

The same considerations are in play for commercial or retail parking facilities, which typically serve a variety of different types of users. These may include employees of commercial tenants and visitors to those tenants, or customers and employees of retail establishments. Just as mixed-use developments have several distinct types of tenants, each tenant has several distinct types of parkers, each with its own unique needs. Parking management technology can be customized to recognize the unique needs of each and manage each one.

Win/Win

Parking management technology allows developers and owners to focus on the multiple uses that happen in their parking facilities. As a result, they can manage their parking assets more effectively, efficiently, and perhaps most importantly, more profitably.

Using the technology presents a win/win/win scenario that benefits parking owners, tenants, and parkers. As we’ve discussed already, owners derive numerous benefits. The technology makes managing parking much more efficient and cost-effective. It gives owners the power to automatically manage parking for multiple use cases and to customize parking management to meet the specific needs of their tenants. It also provides powerful accounting benefits by collecting parking fees and automatically distributing them to the appropriate bank accounts.

The technology can also benefit the bottom lines of parking owners. When you have this much control over parking assets it makes it easier to maximize parking revenues. For instance, the accounting reporting that comes with the technology allows owners and operators to be sure that they are charging enough for parking and receiving all the parking revenues they are entitled too.

Tenants benefit too by having the guesswork that’s so common with parking management eliminated. The technology seamlessly manages parking spaces, so tenants know exactly how their allocated spaces are being utilized. The accounting features assure that parking fees are charged from the appropriate bank accounts, so there are never surprises.

And finally, drivers benefit from an improved parking experience. The experience is entirely frictionless, with drivers just driving in and out of parking facilities without having to stop to pull a ticket or pay.

About the authors:

Ebby Zachariah is founder and CEO of Parking Base, the leading provider of cloud-based parking management solutions. He can be reached at ebby@parkingbase.com.

Chris Perry, CAPP is Parking Base’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations. He can be reached at chris.perry@parkingbase.com.