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 along with one of their very first employees Mike Kuziak. Meanwhile Michael continued to operate independently on the West Coast under the brand of Sunset Parking. Over the years, the three best 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 VINCI Park, one of the world’s largest parking firms who wanted to invest in a U.S.-based parking company.
In 2007, VINCI Park [eventually rebranded as Indigo] 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 and a people-focused philosophy has been the fuel that has allowed the company to become a dominant leader in the parking industry.
Through the combination of strategic acquisitions of Classified Parking, Apex Parking, Ultimate Parking, Interpark’s operations in the Mid-Atlantic region, AlphaPark VPS, Professional Parking and Serco, LAZ has grown into the largest privately held parking company in America.
Today LAZ operates over 1.2 million parking spaces in over 3,000 thousand locations and 400+ cities across the country, including many of the original locations we started back in 1981.
Over four 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."