We visited Millennium Gardens, one of Budapest's newest ESG-focused office buildings.
The Millennium Gardens Office Building is one of the most hyped office development projects of 2022 - and for good reason.
As TriGranit's latest development, the office building is the first completed project in real estate investor Revetas Capital's ESG & 2040 Carbon Neutrality strategy, which is unique because the entire building has been designed with a focus on sustainability and future environmental requirements.
It's no secret that the developer has collaborated with the Parkl team on several digital mobility solutions, such as parking and EV charging, almost from the very beginning, which led to an interesting conversation, a "retrospective meeting" if you prefer, between Balázs Magyar, Head of Business Development at Parkl and Károly Dömötör Makk, Head of Leasing at TriGranit.
The discussion touched on various office market trends, sustainable, smart office buildings, and of course smart parking and e-mobility.
Balázs Magyar: We considered TriGranit as a market innovator with a strong background since we enteredthe real estate market with our digital solutions, so for us working together on the Millennium Gardens office building was a great honour and of course a project full of excitement.
But I wonder what trends you have seen that have motivated the openness to smart parking and charging?
Károly Dömötör Makk: The main characteristic of office development projects is to plan for long term, not just a few years. We have to meet tenant needs that may arise during a long-term commitment, as companies plan for a minimum of 5-10 years when they establish their base in a new location. ESG considerations are also becoming increasingly important in the life of any large company, including minimising CO2 emissions and energy consumption.
As we are talking about an office building in the city centre, the tenants have extremely high and dynamically changing quantity expectations for parking spaces, so optimising these was a top priority for us when designing the building.
The parking lot is the first and last place that colleagues meet: it is important that it provides a premium user experience and meets the sustainability aspect of the ESG concept in every possible way. For this reason, it was essential for us to offer our tenants an efficient, fast, and automatic way to reserve their parking spaces, charge their EVs or book parking spaces for their guests via the Parkl app.
B.M.: You mentioned that there is a large and dynamically changing need for parking spaces from tenants. Do you think that is a result of Covid, which has led to hybrid working, or is it a trend: higher wealth, more people with cars and people driving everywhere?
K.D.M.: This is a global trend, with cars becoming a more accessible means of transport every year.
Covid has made it even more important for people to travel alone and avoid taking public transport, but what has had a greater impactis the hybrid working and change in commuting habits that you mentioned. The 1-2 day a week home office has become accepted and desk sharing has become a common practice in most companies, but especially in multinationals. These requirements have all led us to implement a digital parking system, where booking a parking space, cancelling reservation, or charging an electric car are just a single click away.
B.M.: From an operational perspective, why did you choose digital parking?
K.D.M.: As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to create a 21 century office building, so the first and last impressions of the visitors were of great importance. We considered RFID access outdated, as you must stop, dip into your pocket, and touch it, and the system doesn't always detect the card well, so it's inconvenient.
At Parkl, on the other hand, the license plate recognition camera works reliably , with a nice big screen showing which parking space to park in. Since our tenants wanted to use their parking spaces dynamically, we knew that an Excel spreadsheet would not be able to handle this demand, but even if it could, it would be a much more complex process to email everyone what time they are arriving at the office building today and have someone allocate it, instead of doing what they are supposed to do. Parkl, on the other hand, is a convenient, easy-to-use system. We wanted to implement what we have personally experienced as developers and managers in an office environment.
B.M.: Why did you choose Parkl?
K.D.M.: There were many reasons for this. On the one hand, Parkl's references were the most convincing for us: we had previously tried the app in other office buildings and used it in several locations in the city, so we knew it was an easy-to-use, clear, and reliable system. The other reason, apart from the extensive reference, was the personality of the people who participate in the project, the expertise and flexibility of the Parkl team.
The environmental aspect was also part of the decision, with the rise of EVs nowadays it was essential to have parking and charging in one system, and Parkl can do that, and even take on the installation and operation of the charging stations.
B.M.: About e-mobility, what are your experiences on the tenant side, what are the needs?
K.D.M.: There is a clear trend of increasing percentage of EVs in general transport. We assumed a certain ratio, but it is already becoming noticeable that many tenants are also providing dedicated EV charging stations at their own expense.
B.M.: What feedback have you received in connection with Parkl from tenants?
K.D.M.: We were getting the impression that this was more of a basic requirement, and the absence of it would have been a problem.
In my opinion, Parkl should be made a standard service in all office buildings.
Anyone who develops an office building must know that such a future-oriented solution is essential, because it is not enough for an office building to be in a nice and good location if the quality of its services is below the quality of the building. Parkl can guarantee top-quality, premium parking even in a Class A+office building of almost 40,000 square metres.
Thank you TriGranit for your trust and cooperation!
If you think that your company or office building requires more parking space, please contact us at sales@parkl.net or visit our website.
