The deal to sell Chicago’s parking meters to a private company remains a deeply controversial and unpopular move, but one City Council member argues that buying the meters back for billions could be worth it.
28th Ward Ald. Jason Ervin told NBC Chicago he will use Wednesday’s City Council meeting to introduce a new plan for the city to buy back those parking meters from a private consortium.
While the price tag of $2.5 billion is extremely steep, Ervin argued the proposal would aim to tackle two problems at once: righting a bad deal, and helping to stabilize the city’s beleagured pension funds.
In 2008 a pliant Chicago City Council went along with former Mayor Richard M. Daley and passed one of the most criticized taxpayer deals in the city’s history, selling off its lucrative parking meters for $1.15 billion.
Later years would reveal just how rough that deal was for taxpayers, as a 2025 city audit found the meters already generated twice that in return for the company that bought them.
Now Ervin, the chair of the city’s Budget Committee, wants Chicago to purchase them back at a staggering price tag of $2.5 billion. That proposal comes as the company that purchased the parking meters under the name Chicago Parking Meters aims to sell them to Stonepeak, a New York-based investment firm.
“My position is that Chicago pension funds and Chicago residents should benefit from that. We’ve been fleeced on this deal long enough, and it’s time for us to take control back of our our meters and our in the concession it brings,” Ervin told NBC Chicago.
Ervin’s proposal would call for cobbling together the money using Tax Increment Financing funds, but there’s a catch, as Ervin acknowledged state lawmakers would have to modify state law to allow it.
The proposal for the new expenditure comes after $425 million in TIF funds were recently approved for infrastructure around a new stadium for the Chicago Fire in the South Loop.
Still, Ervin argued the meters would prove to be a lucrative asset for the city’s pension funds, and he estimates a major return on investment could be expected in coming decades.
“My understanding is that there’s another $20-to-30 billion of revenue that’s going to come off of this contract. And again, sending that money around the world makes no sense at all. We should be capturing those funds in Chicago for Chicagoans,” Ervin said.
But not all investors are quite that bullish. A 2018 audit from Fitch warns about the “uncertainty surrounding long-term parking demand given expected introduction of autonomous vehicles during the remaining concession term.”
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said the parking meters might prove to have more risk than potential upside – and a potential buyback deal could be as bad as the sale itself.
“This is basically a sell low buy high situation that the market really is good at evaluating, and we missed the call one way, we don’t want to miss the call the other way,” he said.
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