Challenge

There were several major challenges that Samantha was dealing with on a consistent basis at The Piazza, which she wanted to alleviate at that property and avoid altogether at 2200 LaSalle. 

Inefficiencies led to missed revenue opportunities

All parking was managed in spreadsheets, which led to a lot of manual work. On top of having to make sure the spreadsheet was always up to date with who should be parking where, she also had to make sure that anything changed in the spreadsheet was also manually updated in Yardi. 

This double work and manual processes led to a lot of errors that prevented her from having a clear understanding of the spots available in their lot, often leading to a perception that they had way fewer spots than they did in reality.

“There was obviously an issue because if I missed a spot that became available and couldn’t assign it somewhere else, that was revenue we weren’t collecting.” 

Many people at the property were extremely selective about which spots they wanted, too, often opting to wait for a specific spot to open up. Since the management of these parking spots was so manual, it created a really inefficient system for handling the waitlist. Samantha had to manually reach out to people when a spot opened up and give them 24 hours to respond, and as a result, new assignments were constantly falling through the cracks. 

“This wait list just became a huge puzzle.” 

And finally, uniform pricing, as well as below-market prices sabotaged the parking revenue that the property was able to bring in. 

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Workload on the property manager

These inefficiencies didn’t just affect revenue—they became a huge burden on Samantha. And because of how disorganized the process was, she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the workload with anyone else out of fear that errors would pop up.

“I knew that if there was a mistake, I’d know how to correct it. I didn’t let a whole lot of people touch it because I didn’t trust anybody but myself to deal with the parking.” 

All of these little tasks—from managing the waitlist to enforcement to assigning spots—ate up a lot of time. Since the property was right near two major college campuses, things got chaotic during the summer where there were a lot of residents moving in and out. On average, parking was taking up about 10 hours per week. 

“You could work all day on parking in the summertime,” Samantha remembered. 

Perhaps most frustrating was the complaints that came in, sometimes as late as 1am. Residents experienced the typical domino effect of one person parking in the wrong spot causing several other people to park in the wrong spot as well. People would email at all hours complaining and asking for solutions, sometimes parking on the street and demanding a refund. 

Samantha really thought that there was no way for her to solve these problems, especially not without being as hands-on as she was. But as she began to prep to launch the new property, 2200 LaSalle, someone introduced her to Parkade. 

The Solution

Samantha’s regional manager told her about this new company they were working with, Parkade, and described their success so far. Initially, though, she was hesitant to give up control of parking, and she had doubts that any system could handle it better than her. 

Despite her skepticism, she decided to take a 10-minute call with the Parkade team. And on that short call, she began to believe that maybe there was a solution to her problem.

“I had all of the questions prepared to stump them, but they had an answer to every single one. It made me feel like they really considered everything, and that was reassuring.” 

She hit them with the most specific what-if scenarios, and it seemed like the Parkade system could handle it all. 

“I felt like they really know what they’re doing, and I trust that they’re actually going to make my life easier. And I don’t say that about a lot of people.”

After that call, she was sold. She decided to give them a shot to manage parking as 2200 LaSalle was being rolled out, and after a few months, she would evaluate whether it was worth implementing at The Piazza to solve some of the existing problems there, too.

Spoiler alert: Parkade exceeded their expectations and they did end up using it at The Piazza shortly after the new building’s roll-out. 

Parkade offered a full-service solution, including: 

• Automated parking assignments and payment collection
• A seamless self-service experience for tenants to report issues and manage their parking needs
• A highly responsive customer service team to interface directly with residents and resolve issues quickly
• Real-time monitoring and enforcement by Parkade, including the ability to tow when needed

The Results

Increased revenue

The team estimated, before Parkade, that LaSalle would bring in $30,025 in parking revenue in 2023. But with the implementation of Parkade, they ended up bringing in $57,759 instead, almost doubling the estimated revenue. 

This massive increase in revenue was due to a variety of factors, including:

• An increased utilization of long-term parking, since residents were able to reserve a spot easily and change it any time they needed
• The availability (and monetization) of short-term parking for guests
• Premium pricing for residents with short-term leases

“We would not have made almost $30,000 more than we estimated if we were doing parking ourselves.”

Happy residents

Compared to the constant complaints about parking before, both The Piazza and 2200 LaSalle residents never voice any complaints about parking anymore. 

“The residents love it.” Samantha shared with us. “They can report if someone’s in their spot, and they get that customer service right away.” 

After a few months of Parkade being up and running at 2200 LaSalle, Samantha decided to roll it out at Piazza. She expected to hear some complaints about this, since it would raise prices slightly and require them to work with a new system, but residents embraced Parkade from the beginning.

“I fully anticipated a lot of backlash. I was thinking these residents are going to be so mad we’re implementing something new, but they actually loved it!” 

Shifting parking management from Samantha to a partner like Parkade also helped to establish a lot of trust and authority with the residents, and that led to an overall decrease in pushback on pricing.

“We rarely ever get kickback from anyone on pricing. They know the value of Parkade and they know how much market pricing is, so there’s really no argument.” 

Decreased workload

Samantha went from parking being one of the most tedious, time-consuming parts of her job to hardly having to worry about parking at all. The 10 hours of average parking management per week is down to less than 1 hour per month, since Samantha only has to get involved to occasionally approve people getting added to the lot or posting payouts. 

“If it weren’t for George and Evan encouraging me to have that 10 minute call, my life would be so chaotic today.”

The expertise and responsiveness of the Parkade team has removed the pressure that Samantha felt to have her hands in every aspect of parking management. Instead of clutching onto her spreadsheets that she didn’t want anyone else to touch, she’s now reveling in the fact that she hardly ever has to think about parking. 

This became really clear to her now that they’re in the process of selling The Piazza. The sellers were asking her about parking and she was happy to report on the revenue, and that’s about it. Parkade has it covered so she can be more hands-off.

“I know that we’re making a lot more money from parking now, but there’s no reason for me to know anything else about parking anymore.” 

This peace of mind is everything to her. Who doesn’t want to increase revenue and put resident satisfaction on auto-pilot?