The changes could be key to increasing the attractiveness of returning to the office, at a time when companies increasingly are tightening their work-from-home policies, said Lindenberger, who’s based in Austin, Texas.

“The parking experience is often the first and the last touchpoint for consumers” at an office property, Lindenberger said during a panel on the subject at a recent commercial property conference in Toronto. His company helps building owners implement changes to adapt to modern parking needs, such as bundling parking space rentals with gym memberships and other onsite office amenities.

Traditional parking practices, such as charging for parking by the month, should be reconsidered in an era when not all workers come in from Monday to Friday, Lindenberger said.

“As we think about return to work, it is not typically a full five days a week and yet the way we created and managed and monetized parking is still done on a monthly basis. But guess what? The world isn’t monthly anymore,” said Lindenberger.

Lindenberger’s customers include Toronto-based real estate giant Cadillac Fairview, and he said the company has proven receptive to the concept of adapting its parking pricing practices.

“Taking more of a dynamic or data-driven approach to how we price parking is probably the next frontier in terms of being able to drive a better customer experience,” said Blake Hyde, a fellow panelist and director of property technology, at Cadillac Fairview.

Employees focused on pricing
Canadian office workers are sensitive to parking prices. A survey of almost 9,000 by Environics Analytics found that 43% rank price and affordability as top factors in their parking needs, according to Stan Ivankovic, vice president, real estate sector at Environics.

Pricing offers a key to managing any resentment felt among office employees who have been ordered back to the office full-time, and building owners would be well advised to go easy on any increases in parking rates, according to Adam Jacobs, national head of research for Colliers.

“We have experienced this huge bear market for offices. Landlords are thinking cost recovery and asking, ‘What can we do? Where can we get a little bit extra? Ah, raise the price of parking. That’s a good solution,'” said Jacobs. “Employees haven’t been to the office but suddenly, everything costs more, not just food and your transit pass, but the cost of parking is also higher.

He added that “we have to be realistic about that as an obstacle (to returning to the office), that people are balking at. If you are so keen as an owner or a tenant to get me to return to the office, then why are you making it more difficult? It used to be cheaper.”

Lindenberger sees optimizing parking at office sites as a tool to keep costs low for office workers and as a profit center. Monetizing unused parking spaces could help subsidize those office spaces for traditional workers.

“There’s an insatiable demand that exists. It’s all about how you service that demand,” said Lindenberger, who said valuable spaces are often “just sitting there completely vacant, totally underutilized.”

That is equivalent to leaving money on the table, he said.

“We see that as a massive profit-generating opportunity,” Lindenberger said. “Every hour that (parking) space is underutilized, yet there’s an event four blocks away, that’s lost revenue potential.”

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.