The roots of LAZ Parking are founded on childhood friendships that were formed in the mid 1970s when Alan Lazowski, Jeff Karp and Michael Harth became best friends in a small town near Hartford, CT. Fast forward to 1981 in his senior year of college when Michael decided to start a valet parking business in San Diego, CA. He shared the idea with his two best friends who took hold of this opportunity and started their own valet businesses in Hartford and Boston, MA.
Michael began by serving three beach-side restaurants, Alan with a single location at a restaurant in downtown Hartford and Jeff with a nightclub and surface parking lot in downtown Boston.
Two years later, Jeff and Al merged their Hartford and Boston-based companies to form LAZ Parking. Meanwhile Michael continued to operate independently on the West Coast under the brand of Sunset Parking. Over the years, the three friends consulted with each other and shared their many experiences and philosophies, growing their companies side by side into leaders in their respective markets.
By 2006, LAZ Parking had become a significant regional player on the East Coast when they secured one of the largest parking contracts in the nation – the City of Chicago’s Millennium Park Garages. This caught the eye of Indigo [formerly VINCI Park], one of the world’s largest parking firms that wanted to invest in a U.S.-based parking company.
In 2007, Indigo [formerly VINCI Park] acquired a 50% interest in LAZ, which then formally acquired Sunset and the three friends merged their companies and cultures to form the LAZ Parking of today. The combination of lifelong friendship, a people-focused philosophy and the financial backing of Indigo [formerly VINCI Park], has been the fuel that has allowed the company to triple in size over just four years.
Through the combination of strategic acquisitions of Classified Parking, Apex Parking, Ultimate Parking and Interpark’s operations in the Mid-Atlantic region, LAZ has grown into the third largest parking company in America.
Today LAZ operates hundreds of thousands of parking spaces in thousands of locations across the country, including many of the original locations we started back in 1981.
More than three decades later, our founders and their original values continue to guide the LAZ Parking of today. With a laser-focused mission to “Create Opportunities for Our Employees and Value for Our Clients” we are passionately committed to living up to “The LAZ Way."