NYC Landlords, HOAs Begin Grappling To Avoid Choking On Deluge Of Package Deliveries Due To Residents' Online Shopping Addiction

In New York City, The Real Deal (NYC) reports:

• Online shopping is designed to make life easier — except for landlords.
  
  Call it a game of logistics. Property owners are grappling to adapt to a deluge of tenant packages from the likes of Amazon, Etsy, Blue Apron and Zappos, which have rendered traditional apartment building package rooms desperately inadequate.
  
  In some instances, that simply means renovating or expanding package to support a bigger haul. In others, where expansion is not a possibility, it means finding smart ways to quickly turn over packages and avoid backlogs. Both options come at an expense.
  
  And, when it comes to new development, real estate companies are getting serious about strategizing their package storage approach very early in the pre-development planning process.
  
  “Lessons have certainly been learned from the previous cycle of luxury development,” said Elisa Orlanski Ours, a senior vice president of planning and design at new development marketing firm Corcoran Sunshine. “As buildings moved from presales to immediate occupancy and American retail culture shifted, we learned that some buildings simply didn’t allocate enough space for package storage or consider how to inform residents of a delivery.”
  
  Online sales in the U.S. are slated to grow to $370 billion this year, up from just $231 billion in 2012, according to Forrester Research. Amazon’s North American sales increased 25.2 percent in 2016.
  
  And landlords are struggling to keep up.
  
  At 298 Mulberry Street, a 96-unit rental building in Noho, landlord Broad Street Development recently expanded its package room by 30 percent and added layers of shelving going up 11 feet high in order to accommodate a massive increase in package volume, said property manager Gayle Kennedy.
  
  “We would probably would have built even larger if we could have, just knowing that this online shopping trend is going to continue and get greater,” Kennedy said.
  
  But even that wasn’t enough to ease the package pressure. Rather, in a bid to get things moving, Broad Street has introduced a monthly fee of $25 for residents to have boxes delivered directly to their apartment doors, alleviating space issues downstairs. The fee component has helped Broad Street to hire a dedicated new staff member to make the deliveries, Kennedy said.

For more, see Boxed in: NYC landlords struggling to deal with residents’ online shopping addiction (Online sales continue to grow, forcing owners to redesign package rooms or charge fees).