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JVH comments on Parking News every day at PT Blog – log on at www.parkingtoday.com. Each month, there are at least 40 other comments like these, posted daily.


Off Airport Operator Goes BK (Posted Jan. 31) Australian-owned Macquarie Infrastructure Company is


finalizing its exit from the airport parking business by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and selling its Parking Corpo- ration of America Airports (PCAA) off-airport operations (31 locations at 20 airports) to Bainbridge ZKS - Corinthian Hold- ings, a San Diego-based fund that owns other off-airport opera- tions in Seattle and in Oakland, San Jose and San Diego, CA. One of the Bainbridge's partners, Gary Cootes, is President


and Founder of Cootes Consulting Inc. andAirport Parking Con- sultants Inc. -- both parking real estate acquisition and assetman- agement companies located in LosAngeles.Airport Parking Con- sultants provides acquisition, development and disposition advi- sory services forMetLife off-airport properties. This is not news (except maybe the Bainbridge part) since


Macquarie announced last year that it was ridding itself of its parking operations. Perhaps they have discovered that parking operations are


more difficult to run from afar. Ours is a hands-on business that requires tremendous attention to detail and intimate knowledge of


how parking works. You need people who know the business, how money is made and lost, and how to ensure that income is maximized and loss is eliminated. Macquarie joins a long list of investment firms that have


bought cash-rich parking companies only to divest themselves, usually at a loss, of the operations a few years down the road. Bainbridge has some experience and a partner in the business. Probably a good move, and at fire-sale prices. Who would have thought that the parking business was


difficult?After all, what can be so hard about putting a car in a space and collecting the rent on the space? Hmmmmm ...


They Love Parking Garages in Houston (Posted Jan. 27) There is a major brouhaha beginning here at PT head-


quarters and among some readers. I have received three differ- ent links from correspondents about an unusually favorable article about parking garages set in Houston. Lisa Gray of the Houston Chronicle got it right and it’s beautifully written too.A few paragraphs: Ugly garages. Gorgeous garages. Above ground and


underground. Garages that match their buildings. Garages that are part of their buildings. Garages that stand on their own. Garages that, generally, we don't paymuch attention to. Even the best of them is never your real destination, only


part of the journey.And because we're so used to free parking, paying to park in a garage bugs us. It feels like being charged to breathe. But garages are worth thinking about. Maybe more than


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any other kind of building, they show the city that we're becom- ing: a city that's growing up in a different way than the old- style cities of Europe and the East Coast. Instead of starting out with a tight-packed core and then sprawling, we started out sprawling, and are now developing tight-packed cores ... Gray juxtaposes the ubiquitous surface parking lot with


the parking buildings she describes above. I did notice in the article that there is a factual error but


didn't comment. John Hammerschlag did and went back to the author, and a correction was made (having to do with the square footage of a normal parking space). It turns out it was a typo, and there you go. In the meantime, a fellow Texan from a nearby university


got in the mix, and Andy ended up having to defend himself to me that he had in fact read the blog. None of which I really have great concerns about. I'm


glad people send in articles, and keep them coming. If you see errors, let me know. But in the mean time, let it be said that I do read the Houston Chronicle, sometimes, and did get this one right, even though it took me two days to get it up here on PT's blog. So there ...


Taxing Taxes, the IPI and NPA (Posted Jan. 24) In British Columbia, Canada, the local government has


instituted a 21%tax on parking.This triggered aGeneral Sales Tax on both the parking and the 21%Provincial SalesTax.Giv- ing one a total of 27.05%tax on parking. That may be a tad on the high side, but we see 15%and 20%taxes on parking pretty much across the board.


46 MARCH 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


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