Located in the centre of Surrey, the fastest growing city in B.C., Central City is a world-class, mixed-use development combining 140 retail stores, restaurants, and services anchored by T&T Supermarket, Winners, Shoppers Drug Mart, The Brick, Best Buy, Walmart, Canadian Passport Office, and Club 16 Trevor Linden Fitness/She’s Fit!. Central City also houses a 350,000 square foot Campus for Simon Fraser University and five 60,000 square foot AAA office towers.
The Challenge
Central City wanted to reduce the time and cost needed to administer over 4,000 no-charge retail and office employee permits. Specifically, they were looking to eliminate:
- Receiving permit applications in person and by email
- The requirement to verify employment status
- Approving applications within tenant allocations
- Reducing the cost and time associated with issuing hangtags and annual renewals
- Reducing staff hours required to administer the permit program
The Solution
Concord worked with Blackwood Partners at Central City to deploy a virtual permit solution for tenants with the following features:
- Allow retail and office tenants to self-manage their employee permits
- Give Central City the administrative control of the parking system
- Remove the burden of daily permit management and allocations for Central City staff
- Eliminate the annual cost of purchasing and issuing 4,000 hang tags
- Eliminate the need for email or in-person permit applications
Property Managers
Concord CTRL allows Property Managers to create self-managed permit accounts for their tenants. Property managers have the ability to:
- Assign set permit allocations for each tenant
- Assign and control tenant usernames and passwords
- Assign specific reserved stalls to tenants
- Search permits by plate or name
- Generate parking usage reports
Property Managers are able to make instantaneous changes and updates to ensure parking spaces are assigned correctly and used to their maximum potential.
Tenants and Employees
To assign a permit, tenants simply:
- Log into their tenant user account
- Enter their employee’s name and license plate (multiple plates can be entered)
- Select Save
Once saved, the permit is activated in real-time. There is no need to display a hangtag. The deactivation process is also instantaneous. When the delete button is selected, the permit is promptly removed from the system.
Concord CTRL is completely integrated with our mobile LPR system and our handheld Android software. Enforcement Officers have access to the most up-to-date status information regarding permit lists with validated license plates.
The Result
Transitioning Central City’s 100 retail and office tenants from the previous employee permit program to Concord CTRL required less than three weeks. The results for Central City were immediate and included:
- Elimination of wasted time by staff responding to permit application emails
- Elimination of manual permit management and allocations in a spreadsheet
- Elimination of the cost and time for renewing 4,000 hangtags every year
The results for tenants were also beneficial and included:
- Ability to issue/revoke employee permits in real-time
- Ability to edit permit license plate details in real-time
- Elimination of time wasted submitting email applications and tracking confirmation details from Property Managers
- Reduction of employees receiving violations due to permit processing delays
Central City saved over 20 hours per week in parking administrative time.
The City of Surrey
The $100 million Surrey City Hall is the cornerstone of a major civic redevelopment plan for the city centre. It
Kiosk Permit Program at Surrey City Hall
Concord Parking deploys an easy to use kiosk-based permit system that allows visitors to register their vehicles.