Who owns Chicago’s parking meters? City’s meters sold to another private company, Mayor Brandon Johnson says

CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago’s parking meters have been sold to another private company.

The Johnson administration considered buying the meters back, but the sale price was way too expensive.

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Parking downtown at a meter spot costs $7 an hour, up from $3 an hour when the city owned the parking meters 17 years ago.

In what has been called a disastrous, lopsided 75-year deal, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley sold the meters to a private company for $1.15 billion.

“They made about $2 billion in earnings, you know, basically a year, little over a year ago. So, they’ve already made their money back. For a company like this, it’s easy to flip it to somebody else,” Ald. Scott Waguespack said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson says it sold to an unknown company for at least twice as much as the original price in 2008. For the past few months, the mayor’s team looked into the possibility of buying the meters back.

“We had our teams run the numbers and look at every variation of a potential deal. However, the more we looked into it, the more problems emerged,” Johnson said.

Johnson says, had the city bought the parking meters back, 100% of the parking revenues would be dedicated to paying off debt, which he says would eliminate the flexibility to lower rates or reduce the number of some meters.

“If for some, whatever reason, parking habits shifted and revenues were significantly reduced due to changes in user behavior, the city would still be responsible for 100% of the debt and payments. That represents an even greater level of risk than what we face with the current contract,” Johnson said.

While the mayor felt it was the city’s obligation to explore the possibility of buying the parking meters back, City Council members were not part of any discussions.

“Putting together a multibillion dollar complicated deal that undoes a disastrous deal for the city is something we got to be concerned about it,” 34th Ward Ald. Bill Conway said.

While there is very little wiggle room to change the current deal, City Council members must vote on the transfer of the sale from the original company to the new one.

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