Small local players are gaining traction in Vancouver’s parking lot management sector, which was once dominated by Vancouver-based Imperial Parking Corp. (Impark).
That corporate behemoth continues to operate more than 2,000 lots containing 450,000 parking spaces in 34 cities across North America and has been a business success story for decades. More than one-quarter of its lots are in Metro Vancouver.
But industry insiders say Impark’s local market share has been eroded as:
- City of Vancouver-owned EasyPark secures contracts;
- small upstarts, such as WestPark Inc., win over more customers; and
- Seattle-based Diamond Parking adds lots.
EasyPark staff will patrol 44% more stalls starting May 1, when they start managing about 4,400 Vancouver Park Board-owned spots that were previously monitored by global parking giant Vinci Park.
EasyPark manages about 10,000 parking spots in 39 lots, most of which are locations the City of Vancouver owns. EasyPark is now bidding to manage locations the city does not own.
Impark spawned WestPark when Impark’s senior vice-president John Laires left in 2008 to be a consultant.
Once Laires’ two-year non-compete agreement ended in 2010, he joined the months-old WestPark as CEO and co-owner, moved its head office from Calgary to Vancouver and set out to win parking lot management contracts from his former employer.
The Aquilini Group’s Aquilini Development and Construction subsidiary was WestPark’s first client.
Barry Savage, Aquilini Development and Construction’s senior vice-president, realized that Impark had little incentive to increase revenue at a 55-stall Aquilini lot near Rogers Arena because Impark manages Aquilini’s 500-space lot underneath Rogers Arena and parking at the adjacent Costco lot and at nearby lots that Concord Pacific Group Inc. owns.
“If you have a common driveway and Impark is managing two lots that have different owners, whose interests are they looking out for?” Savage asked. “They have an inherent conflict. If they’re managing all the lots, they don’t necessarily look after your best interests for that individual lot.”
WestPark vowed to accept a low management fee if parking revenue at Aquilini’s 55-stall lot remained flat and be paid a decent management fee only if it increased the lot’s revenue.
“They’ve been phenomenal,” Savage said. “I’m anticipating that they will hit their highest threshold. That would mean that they’ll earn more than Impark would have.”
Year-old WestPark has quickly racked up management contracts for 30 lots in Calgary and six in the Lower Mainland, including a 1,000-stall lot at a strip mall in Burnaby’s Big Bend neighbourhood. Laires said the company won the contract to service a 30-stall lot on West Fourth Avenue last week.
The 15-employee venture remains a tiny player, but Laires is confident that revenue will jump to at least $15 million in the year that ends March 31, 2012, compared with about $10 million in the fiscal year that just ended.
Impark founder Arne Olsen similarly got his start by managing a single street-level parking lot in Vancouver in 1962. Growth through the decades has created a venture that generates annual revenue of approximately $265 million and has 4,700 staff, 350 of whom are based in Vancouver.Impark’s size allows it to invest in technology and operate call centres that are more efficient than anything a small company could match.
“In Vancouver we run a shared service centre that employs 120 people. That effectively runs our entire organization – all our monthly parking for all of North America,” said Julian Jones, who is Impark’s senior vice-president of business development. “It’s a competitive edge. We’re a large organization with a powerhouse of back-office infrastructure which really allows us to present clients with a value proposition, which is unmatchable.”
Other large parking lot managers in North America include Nashville, Tennessee-based Central Parking, Chicago, Illinois-based Standard Parking (Nasdaq:STAN) and family-owned Diamond Parking.
“There’s a lot different and more competition in the U.S. than there is in a typical Canadian city,” said Mike Poirier, who manages Diamond Parking’s Canadian operations and is based in Vancouver.
About 300 of Diamond’s 1,800 lots are in Metro Vancouver. “We’ve expanded operations to Edmonton and Kelowna and our plans include expanding to other cities in Western Canada,” Poirier said.
One increasingly common strategy parking lot managers are using to lure drivers is to take part in the Safer Parking Initiative that the Vancouver Police Department and sponsor Canadian Direct Insurance (CDI) launched a couple of years ago.
Police officers inspect lots for the quality of their lighting, how much reflective paint is used in their interiors and whether they have hiding spaces for thieves. If a lot passes inspection, operators can put a certification decal on signage. CDI’s COO Colin Brown told BIV that the program has 38 certified lots and is aiming to have 50 certified lots by the end of 2011. He said that break-ins at certified lots are 25% less than at non-certified lots.