Bekim Xhelili, a concierge at the Candy Loft Factory condominium, moves packages into a mailroom on Oct 22 2020. With many people working from home during the pandemic, online orders are up and concierges are having to manage more package deliveries.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When a package arrives at Tony Gioventu’s Metro Vancouver condo, the building’s front desk alerts residents that they have a delivery. He estimates they receive more than 200 parcels a day.
“By 10 a.m., the lobbies are cluttered with packages from all the delivery companies, and it goes on all day,” said Mr. Gioventu, executive director of the Condominium Home Owners' Association of B.C.
“We’re a very large building, so we can afford to have full-time coverage on our front desk, but we still see a lot of packages dumped on the street level.”
The pandemic has pushed more people to shop from the safety of their living rooms, driving a surge in e-commerce that has been particularly taxing for high-rise buildings. According to Statistics Canada, e-commerce sales hit a record $3.9-billion in May, a 99.3-per-cent increase over the February figure. Those numbers don’t account for sales from Amazon, since it is a foreign entity.
A courier uses a cart while delivering packages to the Candy Loft Factory condominium.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
It’s now common to see residential lobbies littered with parcels large and small, with frivolous splurges stacked atop essential staples. Buildings face a series of logistical challenges, from receiving the parcels, safely delivering them to residents and managing the substantial waste the packages produce.
Delivery giant FedEx has seen “peak levels of demand” during the pandemic. Lisa Lisson, president of FedEx Express Canada, said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that the company has added more than 2,500 employees in Canada since the beginning of the summer, reaching a headcount greater than 10,000. It also launched an e-bike fleet to respond to demand in Toronto.
In the United States, FedEx projected that the domestic market would “hit 100 million packages per day by calendar year 2026. The market is now expected to hit this mark” by 2023, Ms. Lisson said.
FedEx would not disclose its Canadian delivery volumes, but she expects “a similar trend to take place in Canada.”
Delivery giant FedEx has seen 'peak levels of demand' during the pandemic.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Sean Deley, a condo consultant at Calgary-based property manager ACMS, says some couriers deliver packages in a way that leaves them vulnerable to theft.
“Amazon just throws it in the lobby and leaves, and says ‘delivered,’ which isn’t a good way of doing things as far as I’m concerned.” (Amazon did not respond when asked about its delivery practices.)
An ACMS building recently installed a parcel locker from Canada Post, which has improved security, Mr. Deley said. In 2015, the Crown corporation began installing them in residential buildings in response to the increasing influx of packages. It has lockers in at least half of the residential buildings in Canada with 60 or more units, according to spokesman Jon Hamilton.
“Online shopping increases by about 25 per cent when lockers are installed,” he said, explaining that the added security can make residents more comfortable ordering packages.
Currently, residents access the lockers with a shared key that arrives in their mailbox. Canada Post is developing automated ones that could trigger a notification on a resident’s phone when a package arrives. Mr. Hamilton says the automated lockers could open by scanning a code on your phone.
However, not all packages fit in a mailbox.
Couriers deliver packages to the Candy Loft Factory condominiums.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
“People are ordering everything from kayaks to canoes to bed furniture,” Mr. Gioventu said.
He says he believes the best way to keep packages secure is to hire a full-time concierge or security guard to mind deliveries, but he has seen creative solutions for buildings that have neither. Some use a volunteer system, he said, where residents take shifts monitoring the lobby.
“It works pretty well, but it’s asking a lot of the people in the building.”
Other condo corporations, he says, have hired residents to be lobby caretakers.
“The best solution is to have someone there full-time. Cameras only capture a part of what’s going on, they don’t deter people from coming off the street and taking packages. … They kind of give a false sense of security for people.”
Buildings also have to manage the substantial amount of waste that comes from all the parcels residents receive.
“We talk rampantly about single-use plastics. All these packages are filled with endless amounts of single-use plastics,” Mr. Gioventu said.
Liron Daniels, president of Toronto-based Nadlan-Harris Property Management, says its buildings implemented new procedures for handling parcel reception and the resulting waste at the beginning of the pandemic. The process differs depending on the decisions of each condominium’s board.
Some Nadlan-Harris buildings don’t allow couriers to enter; others do after on-site staff screen them for COVID-19 symptoms and make sure that they’re wearing personal protective equipment. Couriers usually don’t get to a resident’s door, but there are exceptions.
Candy Loft Factory condominiums concierge Bekim Xhelili first disinfectants packages, then records the delivery into a database which automatically notifies the resident they have a package for pick up.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
“There are circumstances where it’s life and death, where oxygen is being delivered,” Mr. Daniels said.
The procedures are necessary to keep residents safe, he adds, but they’re also costly.
“Once the pandemic is over, I think we’re going to untie those restrictions a little bit. There’s no way we can keep people on these restrictions."
Mr. Daniels doesn’t want to retain policies that may make maintenance fees jump, especially with other costs rising owing to the pandemic and so many people out of work. He says insurance costs for condo corporations have swelled since the pandemic began.
“We have to be able to loosen [restrictions] because of the fact that money is not readily available in all these corporations,” he said. “Some of them are suffering.”
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