April 16, 2009 – The parking ramps at Marina City are getting new management. Standard Parking Corporation, which manages 2,215 parking facilities in the U.S. and Canada, is taking over from System Parking, Inc. on May 1.

Representatives of Standard Parking would not discuss when the deal was closed, other than to say it happened “recently.” Both Standard and Transwestern Commercial Services, manager of commercial property at Marina City, confirm the new company will take over management of the ramps on May 1.

Parking rates, at least for the near future, will not change, according to Shevket Dardovski, Vice President of Operations for Standard Parking. “Whenever there’s changes in the parking industry, normally the rates will remain the same as far as the initial takeover and then everything of course is evaluated on a look-and-see basis.”

All of the current System Parking employees will stay with Standard Parking at Marina City except for Area Manager David Amponsah, who has chosen to be reassigned to another System Parking location. According to Dardovski, being a union shop, employees at the Marina City ramps, including managers, have the option of working with a new operator or staying with the old operator.

According to Hoover’s, Standard Parking provides more than one million parking spaces overall. The company, with headquarters on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, has 12,600 employees worldwide and sales last year were $700 million. On March 11, the company announced earnings for 2008 were 19 percent more than the previous year.

Recent deals for Standard Parking include management of 40,000 parking spaces at Denver International Airport. In Chicago, the company was awarded a contract last year to manage a nine-story garage at 201 West Madison and parking operations at the Drake Hotel.

System Parking has managed the parking ramps at Marina City since 1997.

(Above) Each of the towers at Marina City contain 19 floors of parking for 450 vehicles. Photo by Mike Chunko.