Any business that operates in a major city is fully aware of the importance of parking spaces. Parking spaces are important commodities that are always taken into consideration in leasing an office space. While public transportation has become more available now and the cost of gasoline continues to increase on a daily basis, many workers still opt for the convenience of driving their vehicles to work, thus further increasing the demand for parking spaces.
Business owners need to look for office space to lease with ample parking available for both the company’s employees and customers or clients. Business owners have to look for parking spaces needs for two very important sectors of the business, as follows:
Employee Parking – The main concern of an employee has always been getting to the place of work with the minimum of inconvenience. While the use of public transport could be economical and is in line with the environmentalists’ recommendations for a greener planet, ditching the car in going to work is too much time-consuming and energy-sapping. An employee could feel already tired by the time he arrives at the workplace after taking two or three buses in the public transport grid. At the end, driving one’s own car is the fastest and more convenient way of getting to work, despite traffic and the prohibitive gas cost.
Clients or Customer Parking – Most clients or customers who are out to transact business will not prefer public transport and will stick to driving their own cars for the convenience of hopping from one office to another without the need of taking different bus routes and walking from one office to the next bus stop. Clients or customers expect to find an available parking space once they stop to transact business with a company. The company will definitely lose business if the clients have to be driving several times around the block just to find an available parking space. Any customer who takes the risk of getting a traffic ticket by parking in the street will simply go to another business where parking spaces are available.
To avoid being confronted by problems of lack of parking spaces, business owners who are looking for office spaces to lease should make the necessary research of all prospective places before finalizing the decision. Business owners must conduct an actual survey or ocular inspection of the area in order that they see themselves the parking situation in the building being considered. They should check the area surrounding the building during peak hours of business to get an actual picture of how busy the place is and if there is any shortage of parking spaces during those hours.
Before leasing an office space in a commercial building, business owner must check what other businesses are holding offices in the building and determine the flow of clients in those businesses. This will give the business owner an idea of how much traffic is generated by the other businesses and how much parking spaces they utilize at a given hour during the business day. He can compare this with the amount of client traffic he expects for his own business and the hours of the day when there is heavy customer traffic in his office.
Options for Office Parking Spaces
A business owner may not find a commercial building that can provide all the parking spaces that his operations require. He may have a big number of employees who drive their own cars to work and he may also have a big number of clients who continuously pop in and out of the office. In addition to these situations, other businesses who are leasing office spaces in the building may also have the same need for parking spaces. The business owner can take any of the following options:
Find an alternate parking nearby for clients. The alternate parking could be in a commercial parking lot or in the parking lot of another business with which the business owner had made arrangement for the accommodation of their clients’ parking. Lease additional parking spaces from nearby commercial buildings or establishments, especially if those establishments have different operating hours from the hours of your business. A restaurant that primarily serves dinner will have available parking spaces during the day and it will be to their financial benefit renting out those parking spaces when they are not needed. The company could provide incentives to employees who will opt to use public transport in getting to work.
The bottom line is that business owners who are looking for an office space to lease must not take parking spaces for granted. The parking needs of both employees and clients must be taken into consideration for the business to succeed in its new location.
The Kennedy Office Center is keenly aware of their tenants’ need of parking spaces. Each of the four office buildings at the Kennedy Office Center provides ample parking for the tenants and their clients. Parking will never be the problem at the Kennedy Office Center.