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| Up Close Chip Patterson, AmeriPark CEO by Kathy Brister |
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A place will be busy, \'and I\'ll just start parking cars\'
The idea that began Chip Patterson\'s climb to the top of a $40 million business was imposed upon him at age 18.
It was the 1980s, and Patterson was studying at Georgia State by day and parking cars by night at a club in Buckhead. One day the club owner approached him with a suggestion. Well, it was more like a demand.
"He just said, \'I don\'t want to pay you anymore. You should pay me rent. You can charge $2 a car, and it\'s all yours,\'" Patterson recalls.
"I thought, \'Wow! This is great.\' I jammed every car I could in there. I washed cars. I knew everybody\'s name. I worked it seven days a week. I just kept doing that."
Eventually Patterson started approaching other parking lot owners and replicating the model. Today he is chief executive officer of AmeriPark, which employs 1,200 people at parking lots from coast to coast. A slim corporate staff of 25 manages the company from a headquarters office near Cobb Galleria.
AmeriPark\'s projected revenue for 2010 is $40 million, about two-thirds from retail parking operations like the one at Lenox Square mall. The company also operates parking services for casinos, airports, health care facilities, office towers and sports venues.
In 2008, AmeriPark sold its hotel-services division to a larger competitor in a multimillion dollar deal that pared employees by about 70 percent. Patterson spoke with the AJC about his business:
Q: Why did you sell the hotel division of your business?
A: One reason was the downturn in our malls. We had a financial issue just like everybody else. We had to restructure, redo our expenses. That was the most sought-after portfolio we had. It was a nice collection of hotels, and we had a competitor in Annapolis who I knew wanted it. Now we\'re debt-free. We used it to put cash in the bank.
Q: So you used the sale to shore up the other parts of your business?
A: That\'s right. Now, I think, we are so well positioned for this market. We are stable. We have cash. We have no debt. We have a great team.
Q: What does your business indicate about the economy?
A: We are in 92 big malls across the country, and we get daily car counts. We really saw the downturn before anybody. In 2007, our car counts were really going down -- 20 percent, 25 percent -- first in California, and then it spread to different cities. It was alarming. Charlotte was the last city to go. It was a year after California. . . . This holiday season we were up 1 percent. January was up 3 percent.
Q: Where did you see the uptick? Which markets?
A: It really hit nationwide. In all our major markets we beat last year\'s sales. . . . Now, we\'re still down 16 percent from 2006, but we\'re climbing back up.
Q: How did you go about building your company?
A: I would go down to the courthouse before you could go online, and I would pull up ownership records. I knew every piece of property in Atlanta that was a parking lot and who owned it. I would pick up the phone and call them. . . . But really our big break came when Simon [Property Group], which owns Lenox Square mall, decided to do one parking operator for all of their properties nationwide. This was about eight years ago. They put out an RFP [request for proposals], and they lined up 10 companies, and we went through this whole dog-and-pony thing, and we were awarded the bid. It was an incredible opportunity. In a matter of 90 days, we were in 14 cities. And in a matter of another 90 days we were in 22 cities.
Q: Do you make valets take a driver test?
A: Yes, absolutely. ... There\'s a fitness test, too, because they have to run. We get people who think they want to do this, but after hoofing it across a parking lot three or four times they realize it\'s pretty tough.
Q: Who makes a good valet?
A: If you go to AmeriPark.com and you apply for a job there\'s about 55 questions on an application that really lets us know, first, if you should be in the service business.
We\'re looking for people who are humble, are safe. We\'ve done this profile. We\'ve got to get the right person in the door. ... It\'s kind of a humbling experience. It\'s \'Yes, Sir,\' \'Yes, Ma\'am,\' \'I will get that for you.\' And if you can\'t do that, it doesn\'t mean you\'re a bad person, it just means you probably shouldn\'t go in the service business..
Q: Do you still park cars?
A: Yeah. What usually happens is I\'ll pull up to a place, and it\'ll be busy, and I\'ll just start parking cars. And the guys will say, "Get him outta here."
Meet Chip Patterson
Job: CEO of AmeriPark
Age: 43
Hometown: Grand Rapids, Mich., but moved to Atlanta in 1976.
Current residence: East Cobb
Family: Married his high school sweetheart, Shawna; three daughters, Morgan, 15; Ansley, 11; Lilly, 4; son, Evan, 8.
Education: Graduated from Lassiter High in Marietta; currently a senior at Georgia State University studying philanthropic management
Reading now: "Halftime" by Bob Buford
Most-played song: "I have four kids with iPods. I no longer get to make any choices."
Favorite things about Atlanta: The restaurants and chefs; direct flights to so many places.
Little-known fact: His real name is Roger.
Copyright � 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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