ST. LOUIS — 51ºÚÁÏ Lambert International Airport officials say they expect an uptick in customer service regarding its lots, garages and shuttle buses if a new company takes over management of the operation on July 1.
"We certainly believe that this will be a better provider than we've had in the past," Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge told the city Airport Commission on Wednesday before the panel endorsed the hiring of Connecticut-based LAZ Parking Midwest LLC.
LAZ would replace SP Plus LLC, which has run Lambert's Super Park operation since 2021. Also in the running were two other companies. The change must still be OK'd by the city's chief fiscal body, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment.
Among complaints, Hamm-Niebruegge said, have been that passengers sometimes have to wait for a shuttle bus longer than the airport's 10-minute goal. She also said a phone line for customers sometimes hasn't been answered.
People are also reading…
Hamm-Niebruegge said based on printed material submitted by the companies that she had reviewed, LAZ was "far superior" on "how they rate customer experience and what it means to them."
Hamm-Niebruegge cautioned, however, that an ongoing shortage of people willing to work as shuttle drivers since the pandemic also affects the parking operation's performance. Airport officials say Lambert currently is 25 drivers short.
A five-person city selection panel had recommended LAZ over the three other firms that had responded to a request for proposals.
The contract calls for LAZ to be paid a management fee of $1.35 million from July through mid-2026, up from the current fee of $949,795. The fee would increase to about $1.43 million by the last year of the three-year contract.
Rob Salarano, Lambert's properties manager, said SP Plus, the current parking system manager, had proposed the lowest-costing deal for the new contract, of about $1 million a year. ACE Parking proposed $1.4 million, ABM Aviation $1.8 million and LAZ about $2.2 million.
Once the selection panel decided LAZ had the best overall package of the four, Salarano said, the airport negotiated the price down to $1.35 million.
Salarano said LAZ's use of a corporate backup system to answer the customer phone line when it initially goes unanswered was "one of the things most attractive" about the company.
Officials said LAZ already manages parking at 37 airports, including facilities in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Denver.
One airport commissioner, Sean Fitzgerald, said he believes that the timing between shuttles offered by Lambert's own operation isn't on par with some off-site parking facility operators who bus passengers to and from the airport.
"It drives me nuts when I see two internal shuttles stacked" at the same terminal, he said.
Another commissioner, Kitty Ratcliffe, said her own negative experiences have been with parking lot operations, not the shuttles.
Twice, she said, she's been stuck trying to exit a lot but couldn't do so because "the machines didn't work" and no one answered a customer phone number.
