Hartford Business Journal

8 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JULY 26, 2021 Empire Builder Expanding Propark Mobility helps make Hartford a central hub to U.S. parking industry By Sean Teehan & Greg Bordonaro steehan@hartfordbusiness.com H artford has been known as a dominant home to the insurance industry for decades, but quietly the city may be able to boast another title: parking capital of the U.S. Two of the largest privately- owned parking operators in the country call Hartford home and both were founded by a small group of entrepreneurs who started their operations around the same time in the 1980s. Alan Lazowski's LAZ Parking typically captures most of the attention, but another parking operator — Propark Mobility — has become a major national player with 3,000 employees (including 200 in Hartford and 500 in Connecticut) and 600 locations in 17 states and 101 cities. While the pandemic dealt a major blow to the parking industry in general, Propark was able to add 20 new locations and has ambitious plans to double in size over the next five years through acquisitions and competitive bidding on management contracts, said CEO John Schmid, who founded the company in 1984 with his wife Betsy Schmid and business partner Joe Coppola. The pandemic shut down a number of Propark-operated lots and forced layoffs, but the company spent the last year stiffening its technology backbone and has now digitized nearly every aspect of its operations, which Schmid said will be key to the company's future growth. "We've digitized everything including our accounting systems," Schmid said. "We are ready to go, we are built to scale, we can grow as quickly as [possible]." Signs of expansion are evident in Hartford. Propark just won a significant public contract to operate seven downtown Hartford parking garages, including the Connecticut Convention Center and three other facilities in Adriaen's Landing — the Morgan and Church street garages and soon-to-be-opened Bushnell South garage. The company, which has $2 billion in assets under management, also just unveiled new and expanded office space in downtown Hartford at the former Hot Tomato's restaurant location that adjoins Union Station, where Propark is headquartered. The company leased the space right before the pandemic and spent the last year turning it into a newly renovated shared office space for its employees in Hartford and across the country. Early this month, many Propark employees who worked remotely throughout the pandemic were able to see the space for the first time — it includes a large conference room, separate shared work offices, each named after cities Propark does business in like Boston and San Francisco, a conference room called "Base Camp," a cafeteria (which will eventually include a keg), recreation area with an indoor shuffleboard game, and outdoor dining space fronting Asylum Street and Union Place. From ad agency to parking operator Visuals are important to Schmid, and the new space reflects that. It's an industrial-chic motif with exposed piping along with visible steel beams that angle up to a high- up ceiling skylight. Glass-walled offices lining the space contain sleek, thin wood and steel desks, creating the kind of Brooklyn hip aura you might expect at a Millennial- run startup. A short walk from the office space, across from Union Station's upper level train tracks, Propark employees can duck into a workout room designed to look like an old school Chicago boxing gym, complete with exposed brick dumbbells and a heavy bag. Schmid, 63, started Propark almost by accident. Working as a Hartford stock broker in 1982, he griped about paying $120 per month to park in his office building's garage, and asked the parking manager multiple times if there was any way around the fee. "He finally said, 'if you work one night a week, you get free parking during the day,' " Schmid said with a nostalgic grin. "So I did that, and I realized it's a pretty fun job to have." But when he left his trading job and founded a new company with his wife and Coppola two years later, parking wasn't really on his mind. They actually started an advertising agency. Back then Hartford had a bustling, vibrant energy. The Hartford Whalers drew NHL fans to the city's downtown Civic Center, where hot acts like Huey Lewis and the News played sold-out shows, and the New York Times noted in 1984 that the completion of the 38-story CityPlace office tower — then the tallest skyscraper between New York and Boston — capped off nearly 3 million square feet of office space added to Hartford's downtown neighborhood in just two years. Schmid and his partners created the "Best of Hartford" book, which highlighted the best companies in the city and offered discounts to them. It was a precursor to entertainment coupon books, Coppola said. But even amid the 1980s era sky-is-the-limit exuberance in Connecticut's Capital City, running a small advertising firm proved difficult, and chasing down clients with invoices wasn't how any of the partners wanted to spend their time, Coppola said. Then a building owner Schmid knew through advertising work floated the idea of the ad company running a parking garage. Just like that, they were in the parking business. And that first 60-space lot was across the street from Propark's current headquarters. The strange mix of knowledge Schmid gained from working as a parking attendant for a free space, and the group's focus on advertising set them apart, Coppola said. "[Parking] was a very stoic, black- and-white industry," Coppola said. "Our marketing abilities and creativity gave us a leg up on proposals." For example, when bidding for a contract to handle parking at the former New Haven Coliseum, the group turned its proposal into a 3D mosaic of the facility. Propark won that contract. "Marketing is a huge part of parking — both in getting clients, and in getting customers," Coppola said. "It got us noticed and it had to help us get some gigs." Sustainability focus That ad-minded approach guided Propark through a fortuitous period of expansion, during which the company started adding lots outside of Connecticut. In 2001, Propark opened a northern California lot in a former industrial area off Propark CEO John Schmid at his parking company's Union Station headquarters in downtown Hartford. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Rachel Yoka

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