The different students that regularly drive scooters across the University of Florida campus have expressed their complaints towards the difficulty of finding parking spaces near the more popular locations. Students are spending up to hours looking for spots and are looking for a solution to the struggle of going on campus with a scooter at all. As construction in the city of Gainesville increases, open plots of land around the town are becoming less and less common which leads to this great opportunity. There is a relatively large, single plot of land across one of the most popular locations on campus that will not be available for very long. This provides a space for off-campus parking in a location that could great benefit students and whoever starts it up. Demographically, this location is perfect for targeting students and encouraging a fast, stress-free opportunity to park and get on to campus.
The creation will be the Gaineville Parking House (GPH). This will be a 3-4 story parking garage that will provide approximately 20 car parking spaces and 100 scooter parking spaces. This land will be purchased for approximately $20,000. We will gain this money back by selling $5 parking per hour, $25 per day, $150 per week, $500 per month, and then an annual parking pass for $1,000. This will easily gain back the money spent and plenty of profit within the first year. Once the cost of buying and building the land and building has been regained, the remaining money will be profit that can go into maintaining the building and potentially expanding in the future. Most of the money gained would go into maintaining a clean parking garage and providing a designated personally parking space in one of the best locations near the University of Florida.
Venture Concept
Currently one of the only parking options on or near the University of Florida is the on-campus parking that most students find frustrating. The few spaces offered on campus are, for the most part, the only competitors close enough for students to consider parking in to get on to campus. For this reason, I believe it will be a quick purchase for many students and will require minimal convincing in doing so. This is due to the idea that many students often find themselves late to class or even just missing out on events due to not having the option of a quick and easily-accessible parking space. This strong focus on academics and on-campus involvement in Gainesville will encourage a lot of individuals to partake in GPH regardless of the cost. The prices are relatively high, however, the location and ease of access provided seems to make the price adequate. The costs would come down to 3 to 4 different security guards that would rotate shifts in manning the entrance booth, and 4 to 5 janitors that would rotate in keeping the building in a clean state.
The location of the GPH is the most notable advantage the parking garage has over all other competitors. This resource is what will convince individuals to park there simply because of how easy it would make it to get onto campus. With close to no other options of land to build a parking garage on anywhere near as close to campus, it will be nearly impossible for competitors to have a similar situation.
The next venture I'd like to tackle is a different parking garage on the more popular parts of the opposite side of the campus and then potentially moving on to other schools with similar situations.
In the next five years, I hope to have several more successful parking garages across the state in locations where they are needed. In ten years, however, I hope to have successful parking garages across the world in locations where I believe they will thrive, while having enough money to be able to take risks in where I start opening them.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteI have worked in the construction business for some time now, and I have been pricing land for several months. I am not sure if you know what this piece of land actually cost, but $20,000 seems extremely low, especially due to the location and the amount of land it would require to build a 3-4 story paring garage. You would at least need 1 to 1.5 acers. Outside of a major city this would cost nearly $60,000. In Gainesville anywhere near the school for less than an acer is over $100,000. Realistic numbers for constructions are going to be well over a million. Any time you build a structure that is two stories or more with that much weight required you have a lot of engineering and ground prep cost before you can even start. Unless you have huge amounts of money or investors, it will be very difficult to get started. Not to mention that the City of Gainesville would have to approve the plans after you pay to engineer the project, that is if you find a piece of land that is zoned for this type of building.
I did not mention all this to discourage you, but just so you have a realistic understanding of the cost. Have you thought about a valet service where you have a location in town where you could load the scooters into a large trailer for parking then drive nearby to park, until you are alerted with an app that they are ready to pick up. Just an idea!
Tony
Rob,
ReplyDeleteI think it is great that you have those numbers in your venture concept but I would add sources as to how you got them and also what competitors are doing. For example my wife works at the animal hospital at UF. Maybe having the prices of what they charge for parking would add more value to the numbers you listed. That way it will be easier to compare. At first glance the prices did seem high but like you said because of the location and convenience I think people will buy anyway. So add some sources and some comparison points to those numbers and I think it will help when you present your idea to investors etc.
Lucas