Lots to manage

Just as when you're manoeuvering your car into a tight parking space, you're generally not desperate
for professional assistance, so in the case of wealthy developers and hotel operators, they are not, as a rule in Poland, falling over themselves to seek the advice
of 'experts' to manage the parking complexes they've built for their tenants and paying guests. Naturally enough, parking professionals think they're making a big mistake

Every now and then in the centre of Warsaw, you'll notice pockets of men directing drivers into much sought after parking spaces, in the hope of being remunerated with a handful of spare change. They are the parking operators at their most primitive, though the job title would probably be of little interest to them. Further up the food chain, exist professionals in the field, those who operate multi-level parking lots for top office buildings and hotels in the city. As with numerous other means the poor seize upon to eke out a living, helping people to park their cars has become a slick, international, multi-million dollar business with highly-skilled specialists at the helm.

Squeezing out the income
The 'tenants' market' as exists in Poland at the moment in the office sector and the struggle hoteliers are having in an oversupplied market to attract guests, to take but two examples, means they have to examine every aspect of their business to both offer the very best to their clients, and to operate all their facilities in the most cost-effective manner. The growth of property and facility management firms in Poland is one outcome of this phenomenon; the emergence of car parking consultants and operators is another.
"The first goal of any developer is to fill their office or retail space and the parking facility is usually only a consideration at the end," says Marek Gonicki President of Poland Car Parking, a firm offering both consultancy and operating services. "But most simply don't realize how much money they can make out of the parking facility," he adds.

Paying for what we need
"A parking facility is a must for a class A building," says Andrzej Lany of Karimpol, developers of a number of buildings in Warsaw. A specialist parking operator however is not, for this firm, whose property manager takes on the role of managing the parking lot. It's simply a "security operation" says Lany, who goes on to explain, "that our parking space is for the exclusive use of tenants and any income from parking is not so important".
Marek Gonicki summarises the role of a parking operator for its client the developer, as "bringing as much value out of the property, [the parking lot] as is possible for the owner". One of the key functions of the operator is to take on full responsibility for the running of the facility, which also means "assuming all expenses related" to the service, according to Eftal Koklu of Eurocentrum who employ Poland Car Parking as their lot's operator.  "The gross income of the parking facility is shared between us and the operator, in a ratio which works to our advantage with increased turnover," he says.

Before you build
The strategic alliance formed between the British engineering and transport firm the Hill Cannon Partnership and the American Walker Car Parking Consultants, has until recently been involved in a number of parking lot developments in Poland. According to Structural Engineer, Jacek Kowalczyk, a Pole who is however based at Hill Cannon's office in Reading in the UK, their role normally begins with traffic analysis, which involves assessing the volumes of traffic that exist before a parking lot is constructed, then estimating to what extent the planned building will generate extra vehicles, travelling in and around the area. They can then advise their clients on any necessary design modifications, to do with access, etc.
The consultants were behind the design of an underground parking lot in Plac Wolnośći in Poznań, a joint venture between the city authorities there and constructors Budimex. This says Kowalczyk was however "difficult to develop", which he maintains goes for underground parking lots in general, because "Polish building law, is not favourable to such construction".

Don't even go there
In the case of the Poznań project, development of the parking lot was held up for six months because of the anxieties of conservators and businesses in the vicinity, who were concerned about the levels of traffic that the parking lot might generate. In the end the matter had to go to the courts.
That maybe a very specific way in which underground parking wasn't to the taste of the locals, but according to Jerzy Siwicki of Parkingi Polska, one of Poland Car Parking's main competitors, in another sense it doesn't appeal. "In Poland there is a certain wariness about underground parking lots, as people anticipate entrance fees. In Europe, on the other hand, they're quite accustomed to using them. Here, we are trying to promote the value of underground parking and make the customer conscious of the comfort it provides. In winter, you don't have to clear the snow and in summer cars don't overheat. This type of facility is also more secure against car theft."
Both Eurocentrum, with its three underground parking levels with a total 800 spaces, under its first, (of four), buildings and Karimpol, whose Mistral building contains 239 underground spaces, are clearly not shy of hiding stationary cars away beneath the earth; they just differ on who should manage the lots.

At your peril
"A lot of developers build nice buildings, but ignore parking," says Marek Gonicki  "and in the end they find they have a really big problem." Of those who decide to go it alone and manage their parking facilities themselves, he adds, "there are a few really nice facilities in Poland but often when owners ask us to help them, I have to advise them to re-build whole parts of the lot and they need to spend a lot of money. If an operator like ours can come in at an early stage, then the client will have fewer problems in the future".
 Karimpol however don't seem to be convinced, believing according to Andrzej Lany, that a parking operator would end up hiring out parking space to non-tenants, in order to make money out of the building. "The security side of things would suffer if outsiders came and used the parking lot. Our tenants have to have priority."