Apartments, Uber team up for app test
75 properties in area have designated pickup and dropoff spots
Uber is starting to drive changes at high-end apartment complexes. Greystar has launched a partnership with the ride-sharing giant to put designated pickup and dropoff spots at properties.
U BER is starting to drive changes at Houston’s large high-end apartment complexes. Real estate company Greystar, for example, has launched a partnership with the ridesharing giant to put designated pickup and dropoff spots outside 75 local residential properties.
When a resident calls for a ride, the app will guide the driver and passenger to a parking spot with an Uber sign, instead of trying to orchestrate a rendezvous somewhere within a labyrinthine complex. The first spaces popped up in late April.
Houston is among the first U.S. cities where Uber is testing the concept. The local partnership is another example of how real estate companies are catering to the tech-driven lifestyle based on services like Uber, which grew over several years into a $62 billion company that is important
for urban mobility in many metro areas.
Designated ride-share parking spots were named among top emerging innovations in apartment living during an April symposium held by the University of Houston’s Stanford Alexander Center of Excellence in Real Estate.
“We believe this is something that has staying power,” center director Keith Richards said.
His graduate student research group concluded that such amenities would be a key selling point for a tech-minded generation.
The idea for the designated spots got started when Uber’s Texas team received feedback from drivers in Houston about the challenges of picking up and dropping off riders at large apartment complexes, spokesman Travis Considine said. Drivers often spent time wandering around or doing loops in search of their passengers.
So the team started reaching out to real estate management companies across Houston, asking who was interested in designated Uber spots, and found a willing partner in locally based Greystar.
“We’re constantly looking to simplify our residents’ lives,” said Mack Armstrong, Greystar’s senior managing director of real estate. “We know innovation is the key to our continued business success.”
The company, he said, has a dedicated team looking for and developing relevant innovation.
“To say it’s a focus is an understatement,” Armstrong said. “It’s more of an obsession, and it’s also fun.”
Now at the Elan Memorial Park apartments near Washington and Westcott, one of the Greystar complexes debuting the Uber spaces, residents calling for Uber rides will select one of three pickup spots: Cohn Street, Union Kitchen or the leasing office.
These partnerships can be complex, Considine said, because the pickup spots have to be coordinated with each individual property, then coded into the app.
Uber said the partnership represented a first step toward another one of the company’s goals, a concept called Uber Central, in which apartments would offer residents $200 in Uber credit in exchange for not having parking spots.