Parkmerced announces exclusive partnership with Uber

San Francisco – May 18, 2016 – Parkmerced announced today an exclusive partnership with Uber to launch a Car Free Living program at Parkmerced, the largest multifamily rental neighborhood in San Francisco, and one of the largest urban communities in North America. The announcement was made by Rob Rosania, Founder and Lead Visionary of Maximus Real Estate Partners, the developer of Parkmerced, and Andrew Salzberg, Uber’s Global Mobility Policy Lead.

This is a first-of-its-kind partnership between Uber and a real estate development company, designed to encourage car-free living at Parkmerced and establish a sustainable, multimodal transportation model for communities and developments across the United States and globally. This exclusive engagement between Uber and Parkmerced Labs (PM Labs), a subsidiary of Parkmerced seen as the Bell Labs of real estate, is a collaboration designed to create a seamless, community-wide, transit solution to change the lives of residents and rethink urbanization and living in cities.

“This partnership, and the creation of Parkmerced Labs, is a sign of our commitment to whole living and a sustainable environment at Parkmerced, which is the ideal community in which to develop this model, merging the innovations of Silicon Valley with modern residential development,” said Rosania. “The immediate benefits to residents will be to decrease or eliminate the need for private car ownership, facilitate a more efficient commute, reduce transportation costs, and minimize the need for parking. Parkmerced Labs will take this and other groundbreaking partnerships and technology solutions proven at Parkmerced to communities everywhere.”

“By incentivizing multimodal transportation, this pioneering partnership between Uber and Parkmerced demonstrates the kind of innovative leadership that is needed to help solve San Francisco’s, and other cities’, pressing urban mobility challenges,” said Scott Wiener, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing District 8.

The Car Free Living program will bring together private and public transportation options that will provide residents with affordable alternatives to car ownership while reducing congestion and pollution. New residents to Parkmerced will be able to reduce their private car use through a $100 monthly incentive to be used with Uber, the world’s leading rideshare company, and Clipper, an all-in-one Bay Area transit card providing access to Muni, Bart, Caltrain and more, with more transportation options to come. The program also provides a $20 Uber credit each way to prospective residents to visit Parkmerced and a flat-rate UberPool for all Parkmerced residents and visitors to nearby BART and Muni stations.

“We believe that when city residents have the option of pushing a button and getting a ride, they are more likely to use public transit, own fewer cars, and spend less on transportation overall. We are thrilled to work through partnerships like this one to help encourage more San Francisco residents to live car-free,” said Andrew Salzberg, Uber of Head of Mobility.

“Parkmerced Labs will allow innovative new urban solutions to be deployed and replicated broadly, starting with this groundbreaking mobility partnership and expanding to energy, building technology, connected environments, and other areas,” said Andrew L. Shapiro, Cofounder and Partner of Parkmerced Labs.

Parkmerced and Uber will undertake research regarding program participants’ driving habits before and during their participation, to add important real-world data about driving behavior, cost savings, use of public transportation, and associated environmental benefits.

“I am excited to see Uber enter into this creative partnership to enhance urban mobility, recognizing their role in completing first and last mile trips while allowing transit to focus on what they do best. It is great to see business and public interests aligning so that city dwellers can truly take advantage of a suite of mobility services, weaning people off of personal cars, and allowing cities to rethink parking needs,” said Dan Sperling, Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis

About Maximus:

Maximus Real Estate Partners is reinventing the concept of urban living. Founded in 2012, the real estate and development company is creating transformational value in areas that have been in want of livable modern housing while revitalizing existing under-cared-for

properties. Recognized as the most rapidly growing multifamily investor in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maximus currently owns five multifamily renovation/development properties including the largest entitlement in California history, Parkmerced. This development received the prestigious American Institute of Architecture (AIA) award for Urban Design in 2013 for the project’s innovative long-term development design creating the largest carbon net neutral community. With 5,000 existing units and over 7,000 units in the development pipeline, Maximus has a deeply sophisticated and environmentally innovative approach that has positioned the company to revolutionize the urban community experience.