CHICAGO—The use of online sites to shop has greatly increased recently, and with more customers demanding same-day deliveries, 2016 promises to be a year when many multifamily operators will have to develop a strategy to handle the hundreds of packages that arrive each day.
"It's only going to get busier," Maureen Vaughn, vice president of marketing at The Habitat Co., tells GlobeSt.com. The Chicago-based company's Hubbard Place, a 44-floor residential tower in downtown Chicago, receives between 150 and 300 packages each day, and that's about double the volume seen two years ago when it opened.
Habitat anticipated the need and installed what one broker called a "James Bond-style package alert system." Residents are notified via text message with a secret code they use to open a custom wood drawer built into the lobby wall and retrieve the package.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
