Monetizing Package Pickup

[Otto Kinn]

Hello everybody,

I'm new to the BiggerPockets community, so I look forward to meeting you all and having some wonderful, engaging conversations.

Let's get right into it. I've recently taken over the fitness center in my town (purchased the building & business). The building itself is 6,000 sqft and the fitness center only occupies 1/3rd of the building. The fitness center alone is enough to cashflow the rest of the property, but I purchased the building in order to put the other wasted potential to good use. I have plans for the 2nd portion of the building, but this leads me to our discussion as to what I'm going to do with the 3rd part of the building, the garage.

I live in a lake town, so there is a really large demand for 24/7 package pickup in this community. Between the visiting campers and the cabin owners who usually aren't home for days at a time, and this portion of the building would be the perfect vessel. The garage doesn't have access to any other part of the building, it's on Main Street, and it already has surveillance installed. 

I've found lockers that you could install for automated package pickup which have billing systems incorporated to monetize the process either in monthly utilization fees or per package pickup fees. The problem is that I haven't found any other resources on people who have monetized this, as it's mostly offered as a free service for multi-family dwelling units. The locker retailers though have mentioned examples of other people monetizing these lockers for the same purpose.

The other catch is that I would need to have somebody onsite to sign for the packages and put them in the respectable lockers, but if I have to employ somebody to do that, it's no longer a profitable venture. My other idea was to bring a business into that portion of the building, such as an internet cafe, and work with the tenant to help facilitate the package pickup. That, however, would come with some hurdles as well.

Has anybody monetized package pickup in this manner? Is it to make this headless without the need for an employee? Is it profitable even in a good market? Are there other things that I could/should do with this garage to make money? What other ideas do you all have?

Other notes:

• I have floor plans of the property if that would be helpful for any of you to visualize.
• If the package delivery brings an additional 2~5% tax income for the city, they will potentially pay for the lockers as part of the main street initiative.
• Locker examples:
  • https://www.luxerone.com/
  • https://www.parcelpending.com/
  • https://www.packageconcierge.c...

I look forward to hearing some feedback on this! :)