The International Downtown Association

I’m in New York attending the International Downtown Association’s annual convention. There are
1000 movers and shakers from business development districts, downtown
associations, and city governments from across the country, and five companies
from the parking industry – POM, AmpcoSystem, Carl Walker, T2, and Parking
Today. There is one other parking person here, Kim Jackson, IPI leader and IDA
board member.

This is a group of folks who deal with parking daily in their
communities. Do they buy equipment or services? Some do, but all of them
influence parking policies in their community and those policies affect us all.

There are over 130 seminars for these folks over the four
days of the conference. Three, count em, three have to deal with parking – one,
given by Dennis Burns of Carl Walker and Kim, focuses on Parking and
Transportation and me, the local surrogate for Don Shoup and the policies of
using the free market to solve your parking woes. Another describes the issues dealing with parking when you have a university nearby. Where are you people? There’s a ton of
business here.

Our industry needs to reach outside the more traditional
ways of promoting our goods and services. This is a great place to start.

JVH