A longtime Nashville parking business has joined with a parking-tech startup based in Los Angeles that banked a $41 million round of fundraising last year.
Metropolis Technologies Inc. has acquired Nashville's Premier Parking, the two companies announced Wednesday. Premier controls 120,000 parking spaces in 50 cities; about a quarter of those spaces are in Nashville.
Premier now operates under the Metropolis brand. Ryan Hunt, previously CEO of Premier, now is chief operating officer of Metropolis.
"Nashville is, by order of magnitude, the most important market for us in the United States," Metropolis founder and CEO Alex Israel said in an interview. Hunt said he expects to hire 100 Nashville employees this year, which would boost local headcount by about 25%.
Hunt and Israel would not disclose a sales price or terms of the deal, though a Metropolis spokesman said the "transaction reflects a lot of optimism about the company." The chief shareholders in Premier were Chattanooga-based River Associates Investments as well as Hunt and Ryan Chapman, its executive chairman and past CEO.
Israel sold his previous parking-related startup in 2015 to Inrix Inc., a transportation analytics company based in Washington state. Israel started Metropolis in 2017 and has raised $61 million to-date — including a $41 million Series A round in February 2021 in which investors valued the business at $154 million, according to PitchBook. The firm 3L Capital led the round, which also included real estate giant Starwood Capital Group and the venture fund run by early Twitter executives Dick Costolo and Adam Bain.
Nashville real estate developer Tony Giarratana created Premier in 2001, beginning with a parking lot at Church Street and Fifth Avenue North (where his 505 condo and apartment skyscraper now stands).
Under Hunt, Premier adopted Metropolis' technology in March 2021. Drivers register with their email, license plate and other vehicle information, cell phone number and payment method. A system of cameras works with artificial intelligence to capture images of a vehicle and its license plates upon entering and leaving a garage or lot. The driver is automatically charged for the exact amount of parking time, and emailed a receipt.
"No more lines at the meter. No more boots, no more tickets," Hunt said in a June 2021 interview with the Business Journal. "If it goes the way I think it will, it could be the single largest decision we've ever made."
It turns out there was a little more to that statement than it appeared at the time. Hunt and Israel had been talking since before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and they were exploring a potential acquisition as Premier also began deploying the Metropolis platform to all of its Nashville sites.
"What stood out is something I knew but wanted to confirm, which is that Nashville has the best parking operator in the United States," Israel said. "It appears to be a humble, small company here in Nashville, but in reality, it's a behemoth across the United States."
Almost 800,000 people have used Metropolis in Nashville, Hunt said. Many have become repeat customers.
The deal beefs up Metropolis as several companies jockey to convince building and property owners around the country to use their technology. Among those competitors is Sweden-based EasyPark Group, which has 25 million registered users in North America and operates in 450 cities just on that continent.
By adding Premier, Metropolis now is in close to 60 U.S. cities, with more than 600 garages and parking lots. "We're just getting started," Hunt said.
Headcount check: Early in the pandemic, Premier slashed headcount from about 2,000 nationwide to 547. That tally has fully recovered, Hunt said, with almost 400 of those workers located in Nashville. He expects to hire another 100 people in Nashville this year, in both technical and non-technical roles.
Office space: Hunt and the ex-Premier crew will retain its downtown office at 144 Second Ave. N., and Israel expects to add more office space. Israel billed Nashville as a "second headquarters" and said he'll be here multiple times per month. The two noted that the real estate customers Metropolis will be pitching will visit Nashville to observe how the technology works. "This will be the mecca of Metropolis, which we're really excited about," Hunt said. "It's where the concept for Metropolis was proven out."
