Q-Park Award reflects Quality In Parking

Q-Park was awarded with the EPA’s prestigious Best Renovated Car Park in Europe Award for its regeneration of the Waterloo Street car park in Glasgow, Scotland.

“The unsafe, crumbling concrete parking monstrosities of the 1970’s are no longer the true image of the parking industry” says Ward Vleugels, CEO of Q-Park. “Consumers expect a quality experience in all areas of their lives and parking is no exception. For some years now, Q-Park has led the industry in focussing on quality, design and customer needs and this award recognises our industry best practice in urban design and regeneration.”

Waterloo Street car park is a 10 level, 666-space multi-storey car park located in the heart of the financial services district of Glasgow. Originally a bleak, dilapidated and structurally flawed 1970s car park, a two phase and £3.5 million renovation programme between October 2003 and November 2004 has transformed it into one of Glasgow’s most striking commercial buildings.

This has partly been achieved by Q-Parks attention to design, and partly by the focus on functionality and safety. The exterior is clad in Siberian Larch wood, characterised by long thin “blades” of timber layered horizontally around the façade of the building, while state-of-the-art parking systems and CCTV monitoring ensure that the modern exterior is complimented internally by industry leading technology.

According to Ward Vleugels “Waterloo Street a ‘living’ example of how Q-Park is transforming historically poor standards of car parks into high quality customer focussed facilities”.

“With the European parking market worth a staggering €35 billion each year, we believe that founding all our car park design, build and refurbishment projects on the highest levels of innovation and quality will pay considerable dividends. We are committed to industry excellence and Q-Park will continue to lead the development of European parking fit for the 21st Century”.

In addition to the EPA Award, Waterloo Street holds four consecutive Safer Parking Awards (Parkmark) and is one of eight UK car parks to be awarded the European Standard Parking Award (ESPA).

Between them, Europe’s 375 million inhabitants own 185 million cars and have a choice of 270 million spaces in which to park them. 57% of this market is concentrated in six of the Euro 15 countries - the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, the UK and Ireland and the total European car parking market is worth €35 billion.

However, the top 10 European parking companies only control 6% of the market, leaving huge scope and opportunity for a company with a distinct positioning, philosophy and offering such as Q-Park.

Q-Park is one of the top five companies in the European parking sector. It owns, operates and manages car parks or undertakes hybrid forms of these activities. The company has expanded rapidly in recent years and now claims a sizeable share of the Dutch, Belgian, French, German, British and Irish parking markets. Q-Park stands for “Quality in parking”. The company focuses on parking and mobility concepts.

Q-Park’s shareholders are ING Real Estate, ING Stichting Pensioenfonds, ABP stichting pensioenfonds, TKP pensioen, Delta Lloyd, RUPA, BHF Bank, Reaal, Rabobank, Entero, NV Interpolis BTL, Stichting Bedrijfstak Pensioenfonds voor de Detailhandel, Stichting Pensioenfonds Wonen, Stichting BPF voor het Levensmiddelenbedrijf and Stichting Bedrijfspensioenfonds voor de Landbouw.

About the EPA Awards

The EPA’s biennial European Parking Awards promotes and recognises excellence in car parking operations. Assessment criteria for the ‘renovated car parks’ category includes: overall design concept, construction, use of materials and quality of finish, layout and parking bay sizes, safety and security, lighting, cleanliness and maintenance, accessibility by car and on foot, parking equipment, supervision and management, quality of service and relationship with the surrounding townscape.