By Elaine Quayle
Did you ever think you’d equate your company parking lot with its wellness program? Think again. Parking lots have morphed into multitasking facilities.
Companies across the country are looking at parking lots in a positive new light—for cultural and social impact—to create opportunities for exercise, fun, and recreation, according to MIT Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, urban planning expert and author of new book, Rethinking a Lot, The Design and Culture of Parking (MIT Press, 2012). He adds that improved maintenance, enhanced safety and security, as well as more attractive landscaping, in parking lots have allowed this metamorphosis to occur.
Some companies are installing walking paths, basketball hoops, and tetherball poles so employees can get outside and exercise at lunch and on breaks.
Others, in an effort to get employees to eat healthier, as well as to support locally produced foods, are using their parking lots as farmers’ markets!
Adjacent to a parking lot at corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Delta Air Lines sponsors a farmers’ market on the second and fourth Tuesdays during the summer and early fall. Introduced this year, the market has been well received by employees, according to Delta spokesman Eric Torbenson, who says that makes it very simple to offer employees convenient, fresh food. “We’ve gotten great feedback; it’s always busy,” he says.
And across the country, employers are also using parking lots to improve health through access to fresh food. It’s not a new idea, but it’s more popular than ever, according to Gail Hayden, who directs the California Farmers’ Markets Association in the San Francisco Bay area. Two of the member markets are in the top five in the United States. One in Mountain View, California, serves employees of Facebook, Yahoo!®, Oracle, and other high-tech companies.