University Business - January 2012 - (Page 45)
Adding Revenue
The more revenue an auxiliary service department can pump back into its own operations, the lower the financial impact that offering those services has on the campus community. Keeping parking costs from escalating at the University of Virginia has been the primary goal of the Parking and Transportation department, overseen by Director Rebecca White, a certified administrator of public parking. The Parking and Transportation department is selfsufficient, explains White, meaning that U.Va. is not regularly burdened with funding requests to help maintain and repair the university’s parking lots and roads; the department generates funds to cover those costs. Historically, it has done so mainly through parking permit fees, which are paid by faculty, staff, and students who regularly need to be on campus. But while operating costs have risen in the last several years, says White, Parking and Transportation has managed to “hold permit parking fees steady,” mainly by creating new revenue streams. “We recognized that we had to diversify where our money was coming from,” says White, explaining that the department did not want to keep asking faculty, staff, and students to pay more each year for the right to park on campus; the cost was getting prohibitive. “We knew we couldn’t keep going back to our [permit holders] with fee increases,” she says. So White and her team brainstormed additional ways to generate income from other people who visited the Charlottesville campus. “We’re constantly looking for activity, to identify where to add new meters,” says White. Each parking meter generates between $4 and $10-a-day when placed in high turnover areas, and meters are used by individuals who need to be on campus short-term, such as to stop and turn in a paper. They are priced and placed for use for up to two hours. For folks who need to park on campus several times during
‘We knew we couldn’t keep going back to our [permit holders] with fee increases.’
—Rebecca White, University of Virginia
Space Sold: Businesses can purchase ad space in parking garage elevators.
The first such initiative was selling parking spaces for special events, such as football games and concerts—even bull riding competitions. Members of the public attending a special event on campus are now charged a fee to park in U.Va.’s parking lots for a couple of hours, thereby helping to pay the $800,000 per year required just to maintain the 10,000 surface parking spaces (which doesn’t include the $500,000 per year to maintain the 7,700 structured parking spaces). Another revenue stream that has added significant funds has been installing additional parking meters on campus.
the school year, but not enough to warrant paying $150 to $1,020 for a permanent parking spot, U.Va. has introduced a new occasional parker permit. This package offers 10 one-day permits for as little as $10, which owners can use as needed. “We found that people want flexibility,” says White, and the occasional parker permits provide exactly that—flexibility where and when they can be used. White’s department also looked at when existing assets were underutilized, which helped spot opportunities for additional revenue generation. Since parking lots are underutilized by the campus community during holiday and summer breaks, the university offered to lease some of those spaces to a nearby shopping center once the college closes in December. It was a perfect fit—the campus had parking spaces sitting idle, exactly when the shopping mall was in need of more. White explains that since the spaces are a little remote, the mall asks its employees to park there, rather than direct customers off-site, but in doing so, dozens of spots near the stores open up. Likewise, during the school year there are frequently times when the university’s buses are not in operation. Rather than having them sit idle, too, Parking and Transportation offers them as charter buses to local organizations in need of group transportation for a few hours. Even empty space on elevators inside parking garages, inside bus shelters, and inside the buses themselves is sold to advertisers for added income. Generating revenue from a diverse group of profit centers helps reduce the need to rely on parking permit revenue to cover the department’s costs, while still providing parking in 11 garages and 100 lots, and 60,000 hours of fixed-route bus service to parking areas, points on campus, and to student neighborhoods. For the 2011-2012 academic year, U.Va.’s Parking and Transportation revenue and internal recoveries will increase by 6.4 percent, to $13 million.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - January 2012
University Business - January 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Human Resources
Campus CFo
Getting Carded
Choosing telepresence
boosting the bottom line
Printer Purchase Pointers
Money Matters
Viewpoint
End Note
University Business - January 2012
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