Parking by Computer

Success as a parking operator once depended on little more than a fairly level lot and familiarity with all kinds of gear shifts. But the auto birth rate has soared so high, the crush for parking space has become so great and the cost of building and operating parking garages has grown so fast that the business is now dominated by big chains. When one of the biggest of the chains, Kinney Service Corp., last month was admitted to the New York Stock Exchange, the financial world saw the move as evidence that a fender-banging, slightly shady trade had finally matured into a full-fledged industry. Parking spaces now generate about $500 million in revenues throughout the U.S. each year.

Official Support. Perhaps the best sign of maturity is that the parking chains are now nearly as attentive to cost accounting and technological change as are the Detroit automakers whose products they park. The typical parking space, Kinney has discovered, must turn over 1 1/2 times daily just to break even. One extra car a day parked at each garage in a chain operation can mean up to $100,000 in additional annual revenues. Such figures may please the financial men, but they do little to assuage the angry parker, who is usually convinced that he pays too much to park his car. Sometimes he gets official support; last week New York City's license commissioner ordered enterprising property owners who had set up homemade parking lots around the World's Fair to register with the city and lower exorbitant rates.

Though lots are still fairly common, land is becoming so scarce in larger cities that the chains are building highrise, pigeonhole garages where cars are placed on a computer-controlled elevator that automatically stacks them. If the chains decide that the high cost of putting up such buildings is justified by the labor savings, the automated stack will probably be the parking lot of the future. The bigger companies are also expanding from operating only their own garages, now are contracting to manage parking lots for hotels, hospitals, universities and even shopping centers.

Cradle To Grave. No chain is spreading faster than Kinney, which last year parked 7,000,000 vehicles--more cars than are registered in any state except California--at 90 locations in and around New York. Kinney President Steven J. Ross, 36, plans to offer customers as many services as possible along with parking. "The service industry," he says, "already accounts for 50% of all business. As we gain more leisure time, the industry will boom." To take advantage of the boom, Kinney has expanded its rent-a-car fleet from 100 vehicles to nearly 6,000 in the last five years. The company also operates a building-maintenance division, now offers a package service to corporations that includes car parking, car leasing, charwomen and guards. Indeed Kinney is on the way to providing more or less cradle-to-grave service: among other enterprises, it owns seven funeral chapels, which last year buried 10% of New York City's dead.

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