Pending Pittsburgh City Council approval, Hartford’s LAZ Parking will pay the city $451.7 million to operate its public parking garages and metered spaces for the next 50 years, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. LAZ is among the parties eager to convince the city of Hartford to privatize its parking.
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl wants to use $220 million of that to bolster the city’s underfunded pension system and about $110 million to erase Parking Authority debt, the newspaper reports on its website. The city hasn’t decided what it would do with the rest.
“The bid exceeded my wildest expectations,” Ravenstahl said.
Council and the Parking Authority must OK the deal by Oct. 29, the mayor’s deadline to bank the money by the end of the year.
The timetable is important because the pension funds must have enough to cover 50 percent of their obligations by the end of the year to avoid a state takeover. They have about 27 percent of the $1 billion needed to fund the retirement benefits of 8,000 active and retired police, fire and municipal employees.
LAZ Parking, which operates meters and garages in 21 states and 99 cities including Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, teamed with New York-based investment firm J.P. Morgan on the winning bid. Neither could be reached for comment. The second-highest bid was $423.1 million.
LAZ was part of the group that last year won the rights to assume control of Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters over 75 years for $1.16 billion. The company made headlines when it bumped parking rates before the meters could handle the extra quarters the rates required.
A majority of Pittsburgh City Council members — Patrick Dowd, Bruce Kraus, Bill Peduto, Natalia Rudiak and Doug Shields — and City Controller Michael Lamb have expressed concern over the mayor’s plan to privatize parking.
Councilman Ricky Burgess supports it. The rest of council is awaiting the results of a $250,000 study they commissioned to analyze the plan and other options to fund the pension system. The results are due Friday.
