Council approves $2.5 billion parking meter sale, with city set to get share of profits

CITY HALL — Chicago will soon collect a share of parking meter fees for the first time since 2008, when the city sold its parking meters to private investors.

The City Council approved a deal Tuesday that allows Chicago to collect 5 percent of revenue from the parking system. The city is expected to receive about $375 million over the next 57 years, with that money going toward city pensions.

The deal also gives Chicago a $75 million payment upon closing as part of New York-based investment firm Stonepeak Partners’ $2.5 billion purchase of Chicago’s parking meter operation Parking Meters LLC.

Aldermen voted 46-3 to approve the deal after delaying the vote from Friday to Tuesday to give members more time to review the agreement. Aldes. William Hall (6th), Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) and Jason Ervin (28th) voted no.

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), one of the deal’s biggest supporters, said: “I don’t like the whole deal. I don’t like the 2008 deal, but it’s the best deal that’s been on the table.”

Waguespack, who voted against the original agreement among the five, also said, “there is no doubt that this is the worst agreement in municipal history.”

The vote took place a day before the September 30 deadline set for the sale.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Brandon Johnson simply called it “a stronger deal than what was there before,” categorizing the previous deal as “obviously the worst deal of our lifetime.”

“Today we are trying to right the wrongs caused by something that happened in 2008,” Johnson said.

He said his administration is “correcting course, so that, once again, my children and their children do not have to bear the brunt of an oppressive form of governance, that is our ultimate goal.”

The agreement does not return parking meters to city control. Stonepeak will take over operation of private parking meters for the remaining approximately 57 years of the 75-year agreement approved in 2008.

That initial deal, approved under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, gave a private group control of the city’s roughly 36,000 parking meters for 75 years in exchange for about $1.2 billion up front.

This arrangement quickly became a source of frustration for Chicago drivers and city officials. Parking rates rose after the private company took over, and the city has had to pay millions of dollars to the company when meters are temporarily removed from services for construction, repairs, festivals and other events.

By the end of 2025, Chicago Parking Meters LLC had reported about $2.2 billion in revenue from the system, according to city records.

Stonepeak became the buyer earlier this year after the city itself considered buying the meters. The Johnson administration ultimately abandoned its efforts after determining that the financial risk of taking over the system was too great.

The revised agreement negotiated by aldermen also changes how the city calculates some of these payments when parking spaces are temporarily taken out of service. The changes are expected to reduce the amount Chicago must pay to the private operator.

The agreement also limits Stonepeak’s ability to share personal information about people who use Chicago parking meters with the federal government or other outside agencies, except when required by legal process.

Stonepeak also agreed to sell Omni Air International, an airline owned by a Stonepeak-controlled company that operated deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security. The airline was sold on Monday, according to the company.

Ervin and Hall also voted against the deal when it was approved by the Council’s Finance Committee last week. Ervin argued the city should push for more money rather than approve the sale under current conditions.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Ervin said he did not want a repeat of the 2008 agreement. He said the Council rushed the new agreement, saying there was a “false sense of urgency.” Ervin also expressed concern that no independent financial analysis had been done on the new deal.

“I think history will judge us poorly, just like it judged the 2008 council,” Ervin said.

The 2008 parking meter deal was approved by the City Council just days after Daley announced it, leaving aldermen little time to review hundreds of pages of documents. This time, aldermen spent about two weeks reviewing and negotiating the revised agreement.

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