Searching For Urban Land Development Opportunities? You Might Be Parking On One
Where did you park your car today? Now think of all the places where you’ve parked in recent weeks. How often was it in a surface-level car park? And in how many of those cases was car parking the most valuable potential use for that land?
Land in town and city centres is a prized commodity. Yet when you look almost anywhere in the UK you will see potentially prime land that is under-utilised. It’s given over to car parking. This has a value – but it’s often much less than the value that could be created through other uses.
It’s not just public car parks we’re talking about, it’s land around supermarkets, shopping centres and venues. How much of this could be put to a better use to create more value for land owners?
Parking spaces are needed, of course. People have to be able to travel to places to make them viable. But there are countless examples of where the footprint occupied by parking could be reduced drastically to release land for development.
Making the transition to higher value use is simpler, faster and cheaper than you might think.
Intelligent Parking Solutions Unlock Land Value
The redevelopment of the Sainsbury’s store in Hendon Silk Park shows how a more intelligent parking solution can be the key that unlocks greater land value.
Installing a temporary multi-deck parking solution complete with lifts freed up a large area of surface parking. This land is being redeveloped into a new, larger store with underground parking. The innovative temporary parking solution unlocked the 1.5 acre site for an exciting redevelopment.
There will also be over 1300 new homes, a park and 10,000 sq ft of flexible commercial space. This will all be on the same footprint of land that previously housed only a smaller supermarket and surface-level car parking. Once the new underground car park is in service the modular structure will be dismantled and used elsewhere.
Rapid Solutions
At Uxbridge and Hillingdon College, a large area of land was released for developing new academic buildings and student accommodation. This was done by adding a parking deck to an area of existing surface-level parking.
Adopting the Osborne-Siderpark modular parking system meant that the additional parking deck was installed within 15 weeks (10 on site). The college then had more parking spaces, plus valuable land released for redevelopment.
The modular system can usually be installed without foundations. It’s quickly assembled onsite yet has a design life of 50 years with no maintenance needed at all for the first 20.
Find out more by visiting our modular car park resource centre, or contact Barry Goss ([email protected]).
