A London entrepreneur says he’s moving his business out of the downtown core over frustrations with Impark.
Scott Perkin, who founded Scotty’s Shine Shop on York Street in 1993, announced on AM980’s the Craig Needles show Monday morning that he plans to relocate the business this fall and the parking company is “the number one reason why.”
Perkin owns several parking spots on his property, but also previously rented five additional spots for employees and customers. He said Impark frequently increased the price of the rented parking spots, and despite paying for them, the company’s parking enforcers would regularly ticket vehicles parked in those spots.
“We have parking that’s our property behind our shop, and we’ve caught Impark at least a dozen times, and this is well documented on video on our surveillance system, ticketing people on our property and then afterwards denying it and if we didn’t have the videotape, they say, ‘tough luck, you’re paying it,’ and then we say ‘well, we have you on video doing it,’ and then they back off and say, ‘OK, we’ll delete it,'” Perkin said.
Perkin said he severed his relationship with Impark after an incident involving a physical confrontation he had with a parking enforcer who was trying to ticket a vehicle parked in one of his rented spots. No charges were laid in the case. He claims Impark has continued to harass his customers and staff following the incident.
He plans to relocate the business outside of the downtown because he no longer wants to deal with the company’s “nonsense.”
Perkin admits he’s frustrated that city hall has allowed Impark to conduct business in this way, and believes people avoid visiting the downtown because of the parking company’s behaviour.
“We don’t just service people downtown, we draw people in from all over London and all over southern Ontario,” he said. “I have people coming in all the way from Toronto to get their cars detailed at our shop, so when they show up and they have to deal with these guys horsing around in the parking lot out back, literally harassing people, it’s just ridiculous. It shouldn’t be happening, and it never should have been allowed to happen that Impark has taken over the amount of parking downtown that it has because you really have no choice.”
After hearing Perkin was relocating the business, London Mayor Matt Brown said city staff are currently working to help council address the issue.
“Shortly we’ll be receiving a report that talks about the state of our downtown parking,” Brown said. “I think the solution might be more competition, that might mean more municipal lots, introducing a different kind of cost structure. I’m sorry to hear that the business is leaving downtown. I’ve asked one of my staff members to reach out so that I can have a phone call with the owner as well. I’d like to understand what his concerns are and work towards a long-term solution in this area.”
Perkin, however, claimed he previously reached out to the mayor’s office and wasn’t satisfied with the response.
“It’s not something that should come as any surprise,” he said. “I emailed the mayor about this several years ago, and received a standard, you know, ‘whatever’ from one of his staff members, so it’s not like the city has not been informed that this stuff is going on.”