This year’s Parkex saw the typical range of quality product launches and new innovation. One area of heightened focus was the relationship between parking and retail. Having been a hot topic of discussion for years, parking companies are finally turning ideas and research into enhanced technology and marketable products.

APT Skidata
According to Nigel Young of APT Skidata, the recession is prompting centre owners to see car parks as a vital aspect of their business: “If owners and managers want to run their car parks as a business model, then we’ll happily help them do that.”
What with the recession and its impact on footfall and spend, landlords are fighting to attract people who stay at home or shop online to save money. It’s this renewed focus that Young wants replicated in the handling of car parks.
“Centres are really trying to boost loyalty in shoppers. I’m always staggered by the amount of money they put towards increasing footfall, spend and rates in the centre itself. Where is this level of investment in the car park?”
However, Young puts the recent improvements in parking systems down to the constant innovation occurring in shopping centres. “The shopping centre market has been the most proactive in embracing technology to increase footfall and branding. It’s this philosophy that has been driving car parks to become more technologically minded,” he argues.
With major banks such as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland rolling out contactless credit and debit cards, this is exactly the kind of technology that Young has in mind. By integrating ‘Wave and Pay’ into APT Skidata’s car park payment system, drivers can simply wave their cards in front of the reader as they enter a car park.
“The credit or debit card becomes your unique identifier,” explains Young. “If you’re a loyal member of a particular shopping centre, you can start an account by entering your details online so the system will recognise you as you wave your card on entry. You’d never have to use a ticket, which reduces overheads, lowers congestion, and decreases crime because people won’t need to carry cash on them.”
Building on the marketing and customer loyalty so vital to shopping centres, APT Skidata’s ticket processing system also displays the driver’s name when they enter a car park. “They are welcomed by name at the barriers, so people go in and out with a personal message. It makes you feel special.”
The website also enables drivers to use their number plate as their unique identifier, with Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) employed at the entry barrier. But the future of car park payment, in Young’s opinion, lies in the mobile phone. After all, everybody has one: there are more mobile phones currently in circulation than credit or debit cards.
Rather than using licence plates or waving a debit card, drivers can use their mobile phone as a parking ticket. After the proper details are inputted online, a phone enabled with NFC (Near Field Communication) can be read by the system to allow the driver entry.  
At the end of the month, a bill is sent out to each driver based on their usage. “The parking charges would be at a reduced rate,” says Young, with another nod towards customer loyalty, “and once someone has signed up online, we get all their details and can offer targeted promotions like free parking after three next Thursday. It can be used as a proper business tool.”

Parkeon / Parking Applications
Parkeon is another leading company working to establish car parks as business models alongside adjoining shopping centres. Having introduced “Wave and Pay” to Westminster City Council’s car parks, Parkeon has come up with the technology to specifically target individual shoppers.
The barrier-less solution, called ParkingPal, combines Parking Applications’ Veri-Park control system with the Parkeon Strada pay-and-display terminal. Integrating the two solutions has created a new approach to pay-on-foot, with advanced technology in the form of touch screens and contactless payment.
On entering a car park, images of each car and its registration plate are captured and transmitted via a network to the payment terminal. The images are then displayed on the full colour touch screen, and drivers can scroll down to find their own car. After selecting their vehicle, they can pay for parking either on arrival or on departure. Because all activity is logged by the system, no ticket is issued. “It saves drivers the hassle of going back to their car with the ticket, and no manual enforcement is required because it’s all there on the system,” says Danny Hassett, Parkeon’s UK parking director.
As with many up-to-date parking systems, drivers have a choice of payment methods. Contactless card and non-subscribe mobile phone payments are fully integrated, and paper receipts are issued so that users can keep a record of their costs.
Everything is centred around making the driver’s life as easy as possible, supporting the idea that car parks can establish consumer loyalty. “Retail property owners have got to review parking as part and parcel of their business approach,” stresses David Barrington, executive director of Parking Applications.
“The car park is the first and last thing people see when they visit a shopping centre. In the past it’s been tagged on to the side; now it has to become integral.”
Tied into this is the removal of barriers. According to Barrington, barriers at the entrance to a car park “give the impression that we don’t want people to come in”. Just as eliminating tickets reduces hassle for drivers, so a barrier-less system allows people to enter any car park without having to wait in a queue. And taking both tickets and barriers out of the equation will reduce the equipment infrastructure, resulting in lower capital, installation, maintenance and running costs.  
But arguably the greatest appeal for shopping centres lies in ParkingPal’s marketing potential. Frequent users can set up an online account with Parkeon enabling them to come and go without paying for individual stays. Once someone enters their details, the system can capture a range of information about that user.
“Not only will we know when they arrived and how long they stayed, but we can communicate with them. It’s a channel through which we can target people,” says Barrington. All promotions being held inside a shopping centre will be listed on the touch screen at the payment terminal, alongside a car finder application.
And the promotional possibilities for shopping centre car parks are endless. “The centre could run a special offer at a certain restaurant between 5pm and 6pm. If supplies ran low, they could immediately stop the promotion.”
Another idea is for retailers or centres to set up a loyalty scheme. “If someone was a frequent visitor to a centre, then they might have reduced parking charges or free parking,” suggests Barrington. “But their data would still be captured, making it easier to target them with specific marketing campaigns.”
Both Hassett and Barrington understand how important it is for landlords to be in control of the promotions and of parking management in general. As Barrington puts it: “Asset owners see it as a very useful channel, but they want to manage that channel. They need to have a handle on everything. So landlords have the power to stop and start any campaign whenever they like.
ParkingPal also puts the method of enforcement in the hands of centre owners. According to a study of non-compliances in car parks, over half of the drivers investigated had paid for their parking but hadn’t paid enough.
“This is very different to someone who didn’t want to pay in the first place,” says Barrington, who points out that many people pay on entry to the car park and simply get held up. “Centres are always holding promotions that encourage shoppers to stay a bit longer. Why penalise someone for staying in the centre, when that is exactly what every landlord should want?”
So ParkingPal allows the client to choose a soft enforcement method, where a letter might be sent out to give drivers a chance to repay the money without further penalty.
Despite the flexibility of ParkingPal, Barrington recognises that pick up among retail property owners might take time. “That’s why we offer layers of implementation, giving clients the chance to opt in or out or various services. After they have installed it, centre owners will see the value of having marketing and footfall statistics to such a high level,” he says.

Town and City Parking
Another product launched at Parkex was RepNet – a new parking analysis tool supplied by Town and City Parking (TCP). It relies on a sensor system to relay detailed, time specific information of occupancy, average length of stay, and the way in which the car park is being used in any given period.
“All the people we’ve shown from retail love it,” claims TCP managing director, Bernie Dickson. This explains why 14 Sainsbury’s sites in the UK have already picked it up, with a further run of supermarkets in the pipeline. Asda at Trafford Park, which lies in close proximity to Manchester’s Trafford Centre, goes live from the middle of March.
“It’s great for retailers because they all want to gather data on footfall. This will give them detailed information on exactly what is happening: how long shoppers are staying; whereabouts they generally park; and whether the car park is being abused.” Abuse might occur if people park in a shopping centre car park, only to get on a bus into town or shop in a nearby supermarket. Landlords need to be aware of this kind of misuse because their own customers might be unable to find a space as a result.  
Lauded as a revolutionary product that in Dickson’s words will “bring parking into the 21st century”, what is it about RepNet that stands it out from other sensor-based products? “Sensors have been out there for a while, but other products just don’t give off the same level of information. We’ve had geniuses working on this from the Swedish company Metereye and they have it off to a fine art.”
As there is a sensor in each parking space, RepNet can produce a heat map for landlords and managing agents showing areas most used by shoppers.
“You can research into the history of individual spaces to see how many people have used them over a period of time. If a retail park had large areas of a car park being underutilised, they might want to put in a coffee shop or kiosk to up the value of the scheme as a whole,” Dickson explains.
“Centre managers love the heat map because it’s a visual representation of how trade is picking up. They can immediately see how many shoppers are arriving at the centre and how long they’re staying. Landlords and managers can watch in real time, or they can watch it back at a faster speed to see what happened overnight when they weren’t around.”
Another benefit is forward planning. If centres have a particularly busy period, like weekends or Christmas holidays, managers can look at the report to see whether more marshalling should be in place in the future, and whereabouts to position attendants.  
The flow of traffic around the car park can be assessed by looking at preferred parking spots and where the average shopper parks in relation to the shopping centre and car park exits.
“A further advantage is the ability to measure the efficiency of parking attendants,” adds Dickson. “It can often be the case that guys in yellow jackets wander aimlessly around a car park with no particular focus.
“But now these attendants will have hand-held devices showing them in real time which areas need overseeing.  Managers, who can view the data in their offices or at home via the internet, can then plan where attendants should be placed and even what time they need to come in.”

UK Parking Control
Linking the car park owners to attendants on the ground is something that UK Parking Control (UKPC) has also been dealing with in the recently launched Total Parking Management (TPM). The concept behind TPM was based on client feedback and a desire to enhance the image of parking enforcement to both clients and consumers.
“We are always looking at ways to improve the services that we provide to our clients and add value in a market that can be at times deemed unfair and unrelenting,” explains UKPC managing director Rupert Williams.
Wardens are equipped with a mobile phone on-screen ticketing PDA which produces time stamped pictures of offending vehicles. ANPR captures all vehicle information on arrival and departure, while the warden is able to ensure all cars are parked within the client’s site regulations. Offences such as overstays can be pinpointed and dealt with far quicker because information on each car is stored and made readily available to the wardens, without the need for parking permits.
This system’s main advantage, according to Williams, is the combination of ANPR technology with the personal touch of a patrolling warden. “Clients want the reassurance of a professional warden onsite, but also wish to utilise the benefits that ANPR can bring as an additional security and indeed marketing benefit,” he stresses.
While many parking systems make use of both technology and people, the key to TPM’s success is proper integration of the two. Every level of management, from centre owner to parking attendant, has access to real time information on parking offenders. Once an offender has been identified, the PDA immediately uploads the time-stamped picture and parking ticket to the client extranet as well as the park change facility, making them available to both the client and the offender.
Williams notes that types of parking offence have traditionally been dealt with as separate issues demanding different types of control and enforcement. With TCP, he wants to give wardens overarching control over every type of offender with the use of one efficient device. “Retail parks and shopping centres all experience varying parking control issues, from being able to protect their disabled bays to vehicles overstaying the time limit,” he explains.
“Historically it has been feasible to support and provide resolution for most of these issues. With TPM we are able to provide a total solution that benefits both the client and, in turn, the visitors. This is supplemented with a variety of reporting facilities which can be bespoke to the client’s needs and requirements.”
Added to the identification of offenders, managers are able to capture the frequency of offences committed as well as general data on car park users. And landlords and managers are able to monitor wardens by checking how much time they spend in a given location via GPS.
Despite a mix of different concepts and uses, new products are making a splash in the parking world by sharing passion and innovation with the retail sector. Opening up channels of communication between landlord, attendant and shopper; giving centre owners flexibility in how they deal with parking offenders; and capturing detailed information for management reports are all ideally suited to the shopping centre industry.
Incorporating car parks into the business model is a valid move for landlords, but the question is will they make it?

All car parks are legally required to have ventilation systems adhering to strict building regulations, which are set out to control exhaust fumes and vent smoke in the event of a fire. Over the past few years, the method of ventilating underground car parks has changed dramatically. Traditional ducted systems have been replaced by ‘jet’, ‘impulse’ or ‘induction’ systems, which use small fan units positioned around the car park to direct smoke towards an extract point.
The use of jet fans eliminates the need for distribution ductwork throughout the car park, which can help create more space and makes car parks brighter and less cluttered. However, fan-based systems installed even a few years ago are likely to be running at too high a speed and for too many hours, costing owners and operators money and generating tonnes of unnecessary carbon.
The standard method of designing air movement systems leads to larger fan motors being installed than are required, thanks to allowances built into the calculations.
It is also fairly common practice for extract fans to run continuously whether the car park is being used or not. This has resulted in a considerable waste of energy and of money in paying for that energy, with figures of £20,000pa for a single level car park. There are many such legacy systems still in existence which are fully compliant with the building regulations despite using far more electricity than required.
It is possible to make extract fan systems more efficient by installing special optimisation controls. And the good news is that all car park operators can benefit from this technology because the controls can be fitted retrospectively.
Variable speed drives can be retrofitted to most extract fans. The speed of the fan can then be adjusted to deliver the optimum performance, making savings of 20 per cent or more in energy use.
Existing systems can easily be linked to CO monitoring, enabling them to react to the level of pollution in a car park so that fans only run when pollution is present. The fan’s speed also varies according to the concentration of CO within the space, and the result is a potential reduction in energy of around 60 per cent.
Yet there remain many hundreds of car parks all across the UK that are guzzling unnecessary energy. The reason for this is easy to understand when you consider the capital investment required upfront, which is money that many companies cannot spare in these financially trying times. Quite simply, the payback period is too long.
We asked our customers across the UK what was preventing them investing in this technology, and we came up with a unique finance package which means there is no need to spend any money upfront and saving can begin immediately.
Removing the main barrier to investment in green technology means that there has never been a better time to start slashing car park energy bills while maintaining a safe environment for the staff and customers who use it.

Slips and trips are an important safety concern when it comes to the design and maintenance of public and commercial areas, costing UK industry in excess of £500m a year in compensation and legal fees.
And within the shopping centre sector slips and trips account for more than 75 per cent of all claims faced by malls, according to Steve Booth, director at Slip Test. “Most of these liabilities come under the category of ‘uninsurable risk’ and thus most claims are settled either directly from the service charge or from the centre itself,” Booth notes.
And he warns: “The UK is quickly following the example of the United States and is becoming increasingly litigious. Shopping centres are now facing an unprecedented increase of personal injury claims from both genuine and bogus claimants.”
Slip Test currently tests over 10 million sq ft of retail space each year, and Booth expects this to grow, particularly in the light of new legislation on corporate manslaughter which points the finger of liability firmly at companies, but also at the ‘responsible individuals’ within those companies.
“Most schemes in the UK are managed on behalf of owners by managing agents,” Booth points out. “The managing agent will appoint a centre manager to deal with the centre on a day-to-day basis. The duty of care to the public normally falls to the incumbent centre manager. This means that the centre manager and thus the managing agent can be liable for any claims for accidents such as slips and trips that occur in the centre.”
And he warns: “Each time a claim is made the cost of defending and sometimes settling a claim is coming straight off the bottom line of the managing agent’s budget. As a manager with duty of care it is the responsibility of each centre manager to ensure that flooring in public areas is safe for shoppers to use. It is also the responsibly of centre managers to limit liability both to themselves and the owner of the scheme as well as the managing agent.”
While liquid spills and dust/dirt are recognised as clear hazards, the use of inappropriate cleaning agents or methods can be equally unsafe, according to expert slip resistance testing and consultancy firm CERAM. The company has produced a free guide to the implementation of effective cleaning and maintenance regimes for slip resistant floors, which is downloadable at www.ceram.com/slip.
The guide outlines the fundamentals of effective cleaning regimes, advises on the use of specific cleaning methods and details the correct application of different types of detergents in regular use.
“The most slip resistant surfaces can become slippery if they are not maintained appropriately,” comments Lisa Cobden, senior consultant at CERAM. “In some cases the use of incorrect cleaning materials, or ineffective maintenance regimes, has cost organisations tens of thousands of pounds, often completely unnecessarily.”
“Architects, specifiers, installers and janitorial services need information with which to properly implement appropriate cleaning and maintenance regimes for the flooring that they are responsible for,” she says.
CERAM offers both the ramp and pendulum test in their UK laboratories, as well as providing a full on-site consultancy service encompassing cleaning regimes, maintenance, integrity of substrate, wearing or weathering of flooring surfaces and trafficking patterns.

Last month, Trafford Centre operations director Gordon McKinnon stoked the fires of controversy over Sunday trading once again. Where does the debate stand now?

A new retail concept, which gives the old notion of pop-up stores a makeover, has provided Whiteleys with inspiration for the launch of its own fashion-led revamp.

Colliers CRE’s third national retail barometer research report, which uses void rates as a key indicator, reveals there is a big and growing divergence in vacancy rates between prime and secondary shopping areas across the 15 centres in its sample.

Jonathan Doughty serves up his regular shopping centre foodservice review. This month he visits Piazza by Anthony in the Corn Exchange, Leeds.

Incentive Facilities Management hosted a round table at Capital & Counties’ Covent Garden offices, attended by a cross-section of landlords, managing agents and tenants’ representatives. The panel was asked what way is the market heading – total facilities management, single service provision or in-house?

At 1.4m sq ft, with a weekly footfall of 600,000, Manchester Arndale is one of the foremost retail destinations in the UK. Being slap-bang in the middle of Manchester city centre with good transport links and a unique student market, the Arndale attracts Britain’s second highest footfall after the Bullring in Birmingham.

On the back of sharply increased turnover in the UK, Deichmann Shoes has announced plans to open ten UK stores in 2010, twice the number it opened in 2009.

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is about to become a reality, but according to environmental experts many shopping centres have been slow to wake up to its implications.

In what is seen as a first for a retail and leisure destination in the UK, Liverpool One has started creating its own biofuel. The initiative involves Liverpool One collecting waste cooking oils from several of its many restaurants and recycling it into clean biodiesel that will run Liverpool One’s fleet of estate vehicles.

Slip, trip and fall incidents in the workplace cost 40 workers their lives last year and cost society an estimated £800m each year, according to the Health and Safety Executive.

Slips and trips are an important safety concern when it comes to the design and maintenance of public and commercial areas, costing UK industry in excess of £500m a year in compensation and legal fees.

Capital Shopping Centres celebrated the opening of its new St Andrew’s Way Mall at Eldon Square in Newcastle with a series of fashion shows showcasing both new and established Eldon Square stores.

Fire safety and air quality are key considerations in shopping centre car park design. Lee Hewings, car park specialist at the SCS Group, explains how it is possible to cut energy costs and help the environment while achieving safe conditions, even in older car parks.

Parkex, Europe’s largest dedicated parking event, took place in Earls Court at the beginning of March with some new products designed to shake up the retail sector in particular.

The recovery in retail property investment markets continued in January, albeit at a more pedestrian rate than the closing months of 2009. IPD data shows capital values for all retail increased by 1.03 per cent in January, the slowest monthly rate of growth since August 2009.

The Irish retail market continues to bear the brunt of the current economic downturn, according to the latest bimonthly retail bulletin from CBRE.

Average retail property rents declined just over 8 per cent in 2009 according to Cushman & Wakefield. But the agent is forecasting no further falls for 2010.