Opinion: Ilitch-owned company is issuing parking tickets. Can they do that?

Matt Wilkinson comes downtown a lot, for ballgames and shows at Detroit theaters. Before the pandemic, he volunteered as a tour guide for Preservation Detroit. So when the 49-year-old was heading to a show at the Fox Theatre last Saturday, he drove to a lot he has parked in before, on West Adams between Cass and Clifford. One attendant waved him in and collected his $20. A second directed him to a spot — business as usual.

But when Wilkinson got back to his truck after the show, he was surprised to see a parking ticket on his windshield, and even more surprised that the $50 ticket ($100 after 14 days) had been issued not by Detroit's municipal parking department, but by Olympia Development.

Olympia Development is the real estate development arm of the Ilitch family's business operations, which include the Little Caesars pizza chain, the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings, Little Caesars Arena, Comerica Park and the Fox Theatre itself. It isn't an arm of Detroit government or any other law enforcement agency — the agencies that normally issue parking citations.

When he returned to his car on Saturday night, Wilkinson said, he saw tickets on the windshields of nearly every car in the lot, and four workers standing around a golf cart appeared to be writing them.

"Your entrances are wide-open, a man flagged me into this lot, and said it was $20 to park," he told one of the people writing citations. "I paid, and the other man parked me. There’s a hundred other people here."

The ticket writer was apologetic but unyielding.

"She said, 'I’m sorry, sir, you can appeal it,' " Wilkinson recalled.

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Can Olympia levy parking fines?

Wilkinson doesn't dispute Olympia's right to charge for parking, or to deny anyone access to its property. But if the lot was closed on a busy Saturday night, he wonders, why wasn't it secured? And if the people who took his $20 weren't Olympia employees, who were they?

He's also wondering: Does a private corporation like Olympia even have the authority to levy fines, or collect them?

I'm having trouble finding an answer to his question.

A spokesman for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan referred questions to Olympia Development, saying the incident occurred on private property and doesn't involve the city or its municipal parking department.

Olympia admits that it has a "parking team" that issues "citations," but didn't answer my questions about how the parking team operates, or under what authority it issues tickets.

"Occasionally, we issue citations for vehicles parked in spaces marked reserved for residents or tenants, or restricted for other reasons," Ed Saenz, director of communications for Olympia Development, wrote in an email. "In this situation, our parking team mistakenly issued a citation and will work with the guest to resolve the issue."

Wilkinson said he emailed Saenz on Tuesday. On Wednesday, after I asked about his citation, Olympia Vice President of Parking Mike Harris contacted Wilkinson to apologize, saying he had been ticketed in error, and offering him a free parking pass. In an email, Harris told Wilkinson that "all of the citations were voided."

Unanswered questions

But the company didn't explain to Wilkinson why they'd ticketed him in the first place, or under what circumstances the company believes it could legitimately issue a ticket. And Saenz hadn't responded to my follow-up email by the Free Press' print deadline Wednesday evening.

So I still have a lot of questions:

When did Olympia start issuing tickets? How does the company enforce payment? If the lot at Cass and West Adams was closed that night, why wasn't it secured? Who took Wilkinson's money? Can a private business even issue parking tickets?

If you're one of those drivers who was cited Saturday night, or if you've been ticketed at an Olympia parking facility on another occasion, please send me a photo of your citation at the email address listed below; I'd love to talk to you. Attorney General Dana Nessel encourages anyone who has been issued a parking ticket by a private business to file a complaint with her office.

One longtime lot operator I consulted said that a business can require payment from drivers it believes have parked illegitimately, but said such notice should be accompanied by an honor box or some way to pay on the spot.

"There should be signage that says 'No free parking at any time. Pay into this box.' " the veteran lot operator said. "But people don’t look at the sign anyway, they look at the guy with the flag, who looks like he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing,"

He said every parking operator is familiar with the scam in which imposters try to collect money from unsuspecting drivers, adding: "I never would have put tickets on a bunch of cars, when it was my fault not putting an operator on the lot in time."

Playing by their own rules?

The Ilitches are one of the richest families in America. Matriarch Marian Ilitch ranks 253rd on Forbes' Magazine's Fortune 500.

At times, the family seems to play by its own rules.

Outside of the sports and entertainment venues, the family's Detroit real estate holdings are massive and inconsistently maintained. Some have been ticketed for blight. The company's vast network of surveillance cameras use controversial facial recognition technology, and the Ilitches have refused to answer questions about it. The Ilitches' promise to develop residential and commercial sites around the arena in exchange for public subsidies remains largely unfulfilled.

What the Ilitches have built is parking lots. Their company has a near-monopoly on parking around its holdings, profiting two- and threefold off downtown visitors who park in their lots, attend events at Ilitch-owned venues, and eat and drink in Ilitch-owned establishments. Now, it appears, the Ilitches have found yet another way to capitalize on their assets.

Private companies often operate with little scrutiny and a great deal of autonomy — particularly in Detroit, where private security patrols public space throughout Midtown and downtown.

Such companies are largely unaccountable for secretive practices such as how they employ private security — or, for the Ilitches, even for public promises like constructing new housing and retail space. Because they're not subject to the same open records laws as government entities, it's difficult to compel such companies to disclose information its owners prefer to keep private.

And now one of them is writing parking tickets.

Nancy Kaffer is a columnist and member of the Free Press editorial board. She has covered local, state and national politics for two decades. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Become a subscriber at Freep.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: Ilitch's Olympia Development writing Detroit parking tickets