The Detroit Lions are finally good again. 2022 saw their first winning season since 2017, and this year, they’re back in the NFC Championship playing the Washington Commanders for their shot at the Super Bowl. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for this game and a lot of folks looking to make money from it, including three Park Rite lots in Detroit charging as much as $1,000 for a parking space. That prompted the city to step in and shut them down, but a judge has since called them to reopen, the Detroit Free Press reports.
If you insist on driving right into downtown and parking in a lot that’s only a few minutes’ walk from the stadium, you generally expect to pay a premium. A thousand dollars, though? That’s insane. There are people with monthly mortgages that aren’t that expensive. You can buy a mostly running car for that kind of money, or at least you could before COVID hit. And yet, the city’s issue wasn’t necessarily with the absurd price but with the fact that the parking lot owner didn’t fill out the right paperwork.
Parking lots in Detroit have signs posted showing their various parking rates. They’re allowed to charge more than their top advertised rate if they want, but before they can do that, they have to submit a form to the city at least 30 days prior to increasing the cost of parking. The three parking lots the city shut down for jacking up their prices reportedly didn’t do that. If they had, though, the $1,000 parking spots would have likely been completely legal.
While the city alleged that Park Rite had been “illegally overcharging for services,” a misdemeanor that comes with a $500 fine and up to 90 days in jail, the judge allowed them to reopen ahead of the playoff game. He did require them to take down their special gameday rate and made them promise not to do something like that again, though. At least for now, no fines have reportedly been issued.
“Today, we accomplished what we set out to do, which is to make sure parking lot owners are charging only the rates they are allowed and not trying to gouge customers,” David Bell, director of the city of Detroit’s building safety, engineering and environmental department, told the Free Press. “While the judge ruled against the closures we had requested, our proactive efforts have let all parking lot owners know that we are watching.”
On the one hand, I get being mad about how outrageous it is to charge $1,000 for a parking space, but on the other hand, if suburbanites scared of downtown Detroit are really willing to pay $1,000, maybe we should let them. It’s not like there aren’t other places to park within walking distance of the stadium that charge normal prices. If the demand isn’t actually there, then they’ll just lower the price the next time the Lions play in the NFC Championship at home.
