Basalyga undercuts Scranton downtown parking garages, private lots with $50 per month price

Jan. 3—SCRANTON — Businessman John Basalyga wants to drive down the cost of monthly parking downtown and has undercut the city's parking garages and private surface lots in price.

The prolific developer and property owner last month started charging $50 a month for a parking space on a 2-acre lot he owns at 320 Franklin Ave., which is the site of the former Red Carpet Inn & Suites between Linden and Mulberry streets.

The city's parking garages — two of which are owned by Basalyga but managed under the city's parking umbrella — charge $92 a month. Scranton Parking Authority owns the Casey, Connell, Linden and Medallion parking garages and Basalyga owns the Electric City and Marketplace at Steamtown parking garages.

The cost to park in privately run lots or garages at locations throughout the downtown generally ranges from about $65 to $85 per month per space.

Basalyga hopes to build a 17-story building on the former Red Carpet Inn site and is having drill cores bored there to determine the depth and stability of the bedrock. While the lot sits empty and until his building plan can advance, Basalyga figured he would turn the site into competitive parking. His offer has attracted about 20 people so far.

As for how he settled on a price of $50 per space, Basalyga said, "That's a really good number — it's cheap. I love to get people downtown and the parking is a huge deterrent."

Scranton monetized the parking system in 2016 to clean up a 2012 city council-induced default on debt of the Scranton Parking Authority.

It unloaded operation of city garages and street parking to the private, nonprofit National Development Council via a 45-year lease between Community Development Properties Scranton and the city and parking authority.

CDPS is a seven-member board controlled by NDC, with four members appointed by NDC and three city members, including the mayor, council president and controller or their designees.

The parking operators use ABM Parking to manage the parking system.

The monetization also involved Basalyga and the mall he bought in 2015 that has 2,414 parking spaces, nearly as many as the 2,659 spaces in the Casey, Connell, Electric City, Linden and Medallion garages combined in 2016.

The city sold the Electric City garage to Basalyga's Steamtown 300 firm for $1 and Steamtown leased it back for operation as a city garage.

The parking operators also got use of 500 of the 2,414 parking spaces at the mall to operate as a city garage, and to oversee the rest of the mall's parking.

NDC/CDPS and ABM operate the two Basalyga-owned garages with the four city garages and street parking that is controlled through payment kiosks.

The arrangement that eliminated the mall as a competitor to the city's downtown parking system was fraught almost from the start. The two sides have butted heads over the years and their relationship has grown increasingly contentious.

In September, Basalyga sued claiming mismanagement of his Electric City and Marketplace parking garages with a flawed validation system. The lawsuit, which seeks over $100,000 in damages, was filed in Lackawanna County Court but recently transferred to federal court, where it remains pending.

In October, NDC/ABM announced they would slash hourly rates in the parking garages they manage to $1 per hour for the first 10 hours from $4 per first hour. The new deal began in late November for the holidays.

Regarding Basalyga's undercutting of city-affiliated garages, NDC Director David Trevisani said any private parking lot or garage owner downtown can charge whatever price they want, but the city should ensure they adhere to regulations, including on zoning and stormwater management.

"As long as they're permitted properly and meet the zoning code, as long as they're following the rules, they can charge what they want. That's their prerogative," Trevisani said. "If they are going to rent to the general public and undercut us, any private owner, they have to follow the rules. That's all we ask."

The former Red Carpet Inn & Suites rented out some monthly parking spaces to the general public.

City Planner Don King said Basalyga's use of that lot for some parking spots is allowable.

"He's still grandfathered in. He still has a decent portion of paved parking that he didn't tear up" during demolition, King said.

If Basalyga were to fill the entire lot with rented-out parking spaces, that would trigger stormwater management and paving considerations that the city would have to take a look at, King said.

Basalyga notes his $50-a-month price equates to about $2 per weekday. That even undercuts the city's all-day street parking price of $3.25 in the area of his lot.

"Nobody that has (public) parking likes me now, but that's OK. I'm going to drive the prices down," Basalyga said.

Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5185; @jlockwoodTT on Twitter.