Maintaining a Clean Commercial Parking Garage: How to & Why It's Important

Have you ever considered what part of your property makes the first in-person impression on visitors and prospective tenants? Often the first impression is something frequently overlooked by property managers and commercial real estate owners: the parking garage. Who would’ve thought?

As a property manager or real estate owner, it’s incredibly important to always maintain a clean parking garage to ensure the safety of all visitors and tenants, while also making a positive and lasting impression.

After working with the property management experts at AQUILA as a provider of mobile car wash services in many of their office parking garages, I’ve come to learn that the AQUILA team is among the best in the industry at always maintaining a clean and presentable garage.

In this article, I will explain why you should maintain a clean commercial parking garage and share best practices on how to do so.

Specifically, I will cover:

Four benefits of keeping your parking garage clean
How to keep your parking garage clean
How to find a professional garage cleaning service

4 Benefits of Keeping Your Parking Garage Clean

1. Retain Property Value

As with any asset, the more proactive you are with regular maintenance, the more value you’ll retain or create within that asset.

The longer a parking garage goes without being cleaned, the more difficult it will be to remove stains and other grime, ultimately decreasing the value of the property as a whole.

2. Make a strong first impression on potential tenants

Office leasing in today’s commercial real estate industry, especially in Austin, Texas, is more competitive than ever.

Because of this, it is increasingly important to ensure that every aspect of your property is operating at a high-quality level, including your parking garage.

When a prospective tenant arrives at your property, their first steps out of their car are usually into the parking garage. How do you want your prospects to react when they step out of the car? A clean garage will help them feel warm and welcome, and leave them with a subtle, yet impactful first impression.

3. Keep Current Tenants Happy

Not only does the state of your parking garage make an impact on prospective tenants, it can also have a significant impression on your current tenants and their clients and prospects.

By maintaining a clean garage, your tenants can be proud to invite their clients and prospects to their building. A dirty or messy garage may have a negative influence on these same visitors.

This in turn may affect your tenant’s desire to renew at your property or make them consider relocating as soon as their lease is up.

4. Maintain Public Safety

The worst nightmare of any real estate owner or property manager is someone accidentally being injured or harmed on the property, especially when the incident could’ve been easily avoided.

A semi-annual professional garage cleaning goes a long way towards ensuring that no one finds themselves as the victim of an accident in your garage, such as slipping and falling on excessive dirt build up on the ground.

How to Maintain a Clean Commercial Parking Garage

Managing an office building and meeting the needs of tenants will keep any property manager quite busy, but it is important not to neglect your building’s parking garage.

By following this simple garage cleaning plan, you’ll be able to rest easy knowing your garage is always in tip-top shape. Here are a few recommendations for your parking garage cleaning plan:

Establish a trash pickup routine. By routinely picking up regular litter and trash left behind in the garage, you’ll be well on your way to keeping your garage clean and boosting the value of your property. At AQUILA, a property management team member is assigned to do a daily sweep of each parking garage.
Make trash cans available and accessible. To minimize the amount of litter in your garage, consider the locations of your trash bins and make sure they’re easily accessible to your occupants.
Sweep the garage on a weekly basis. A weekly sweeping job will eliminate dirt buildup on the floor of your garage. By demonstrating to building occupants your desire and efforts to keep the garage clean, you’ll positively influence their contributions to maintaining a clean space.
Set up a semi-annual professional cleaning service. Sweeping and trash control will do wonders for helping you maintain a clean parking garage, but unfortunately will not remove the dreaded stains and oil slicks found in almost every garage. You’ll want to find a professional garage cleaning service that has the proper equipment to reliably and efficiently clean your parking garage.

Professional Parking Garage Cleaners - before and after

Photo courtesy of Cody Building Services

How to Find the Right Professional Garage Cleaning Service

Before you select a garage cleaning service, you’ll want to make sure you know the proper questions to ask.

Typically, the best way to deep clean your parking garage is by hiring a professional pressure washing service that specifically has experience working in commercial parking garages.

Here’s a short list of questions to consider when identifying the right service provider:

Does the service provider meet your insurance requirements?
When is the service provider able to perform the cleaning services? Can they work around the schedule of your property?
How will they handle waste water removal? Do you need to be concerned with dirty water leaking into public drainage?
Are the cleaning products used environmentally friendly?
Does the service provider have a reputation for meeting client expectations?

Conclusion

A clean parking garage is of the utmost importance for making a positive impression to all of your property’s visitors and occupants.

While setting up the right practices to maintain a clean parking garage may seem like a lot of work, AQUILA highly recommends commercial real estate professionals to consider how they maintain their parking garage.

Once you have a clean garage, you may consider bringing on a mobile car wash service like NuWash, so that all of the vehicles in your garage can be cleaned too. Remember, a first impression has a lasting impact.

Popular Articles: