Joan Verdon

Staff Writer, @JoanVerdon

Motorists pay $10 to reserve a spot for four hours, and $5 an hour for every additional hour.

There are 33 spaces in the reserved lot.

The reserved lot is on the second level of Parking Deck B, near the Neiman Marcus entrance.

MyPark is offering a discount code for a free parking tryout in the new lot, MYPARK1

New Jersey’s largest mall has added a new weapon in its decades-long battle to win over shoppers who hate searching for a parking spot – premium parking spots you can reserve with a smartphone app.

Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus has installed 33 reserved, numbered spaces on the second level of its Parking Deck B, near the doors to Neiman Marcus and next to a central mall entrance. Spaces can be reserved for $10 for four hours through an app created by the Miami-based MyPark company, which began offering the service at the mall this week.

The Plaza is the first major mall to try the reserved parking system, but MyPark also has deals to bring it to a shopping center in California in January and expects to roll it out in many more malls in 2017. The reserved spaces are protected by a barrier that folds down when the shopper who has paid for the spot activates the phone app.

While Garden State Plaza has valet parking stations at nearly evevry major entrance to the luxury wing of the 2-million-square-foot mall, the reserved spaces are intended to please those who don’t want to park far away, but who also don’t want to use the valet. The mall has 12,000 parking spaces, and the farthest lots can be close to a 10-minute walk to the center of the mall.

“We know that there are shoppers who don’t like to use the valet, either because they don’t want someone driving their car, or because they want to be able to get to their car to drop off packages while they shop,” said Lisa Herrmann-Srednicki, senior director of marketing at Westfield Garden State Plaza. "This is something that solves that.”

Previous parking solutions

The mall has been trying new ways to spare affluent shoppers from parking hassles since the mid-1990s, when it doubled its size and added a luxury wing that included Neiman Marcus, and for a few years, an Henri Bendel store. It was one of the first New Jersey malls to embrace the idea of fine dining at a shopping center, and in 1996 it installed a valet parking stand outside of the newly opened Napa Valley Grille.

In 2011 the mall added the Park Assist system – which uses red and green lights to guide drivers to open spaces – to two of its parking decks.

Jan R. Kniffen, chief executive officer of the retail consulting firm J. Rogers Kniffen Worldwide Enterprises LLC, said he isn’t surprised Garden State Plaza is adding reserved parking. Parking is one of the top headaches of the mall developers he talks to, he said.

“The number one reason why people don’t go to the mall in the fourth quarter, if you survey them, is ‘I can’t find a place to park’ or ‘I don’t want to walk all the way from where I have to park at the mall,' ” Kniffen said.

“Everybody’s been trying to figure out ways to deal with this,” Kniffen said, “If you can say parking space XYZ is yours, you can change their view on how big a hassle it is to come to the mall.”

Access to car

The main issue that makes motorists reluctant to use valet service, Kniffen said, isn’t the fear of someone driving one’s car, but rather the dread of being trapped at the mall and not able to leave if the valet is delayed in retrieving the car.

“People in general, we have discovered, don’t want to be trapped at the mall,” he said, noting that while it usually takes only a few minutes for a valet to bring a car, everyone has experienced times at many venues where they have to wait 15 minutes or longer and that turns them off from all valet services. “You wouldn’t believe how many developers I’ve talked to about this.”

With MyPark, “you keep the keys, you keep control of the car,” said MyPark CEO Luis Mayendia.

The three-year-old company has installed MyPark systems at six parking facilities in South Florida.

Free parking offer

Mayendia said the company will be monitoring the Garden State Plaza usage, but it believes that shoppers there will be willing to pay for reserved spaces. Shoppers are required to purchase an initial block of four hours for $10 and are charged $5 for every additional hour. Shoppers download the MyPark app on their phone and enter their payment information. The app also has directions for parking lots that use the reserve system.The company is offering a promo code for a free trial of the spaces, MYPARK1.

Mayendia said it would be easy to add more reserved spaces at the Plaza if demand warrants.

Mayendia described the barriers in the spaces as “a robot with a metal arm.” The barrier, a small box topped with a MyPark sign, folds down when a user activates the app, and pops up again when the car leaves.

The system is designed to be fully automated, but the reserved lot will have an attendant on hand in the beginning to help first-time users.

The barrier devices are wireless and battery-operated and do not have to tap into a mall’s infrastructure, Mayendia said. “With MyPark you can retrofit an existing garage and have units installed at the spot,” he said.

If customers try to drive over one of the barriers without paying, an alarm sounds, he said. “It protects itself.”