LF resident aims to solve parking woes
April 26, 2007 BY KIMBERLY STOCKWELL | Correspondent

If there are an estimated 105 million parking spaces available to let in America, why are they always so hard to find? Enter Stephen Sinclair, a Lake Forest resident, who realized one day in 1999 while having coffee at a Starbucks that there might be a way to use the Internet to list excess parking spots.

Lake Forest resident Stephen Sinclair, president and co-founder of ParkingSearch.com, displays the updated version of its Web site. (Jeff Krage/For Pioneer Press)>

"I noticed there was a sign posted in a parking garage close to where I was already renting a monthly parking space offering $90 for a third-floor spot. I was just out of college, so compared to the $163 I was paying, $90 was a big savings," explained Sinclair. "Then the garage owner took an additional 10 percent off if I signed a one-year contract with him."

The 1998 finance and investments graduate of Babson College in Boston worked at the time for Swiss Bank developing financial spreadsheets and thought there might be a way of collecting excess capacity data from parking garage owners. With an understanding of how to query and set up databases gained from his work at the bank and the germ of the parking idea, he launched ParkingSearch.com.

Using the Web, his business -- headquartered on Wisconsin Avenue in Lake Forest -- opened up a new marketing channel for parking space listings uniting potential buyers, sellers and renters. "ParkingSearch.com is a great resource for price comparisons sorted by a search engine," said Sinclair. Posting an available parking space on the site costs $14.95 per month. The advantage of listing with ParkingSearch.com over buying a classified print ad is the ability to search by specific zip code. So a potential buyer can get onto the site and see what deeded parking spots are available near a particular condo.

In addition to the fees collected through parking space listings, Sinclair's firm sells market research data to parking garage owners and related advertising using Google AdSense.

ParkingSearch.com has a strong Web presence in both the Los Angles and New York parking space markets as measured by the number of unique visitors to the site. Sinclair plans to launch a mobile version of the service to help drivers locate available short-term parking spaces via cell phone.

Sinclair, who attended Loyola Academy from 1990-94 and is now a married father of two, is working to develop a real-time parking search by zip code and for tourists, a garage exclusive in Washington, D.C. which would direct them to parking near major tourist destinations. With only four employees, the company is a lean organization.

"We don't need a customer service group because everything is done via e-mail," he said. "We use e-mail notifications to update users. They access the database by entering a zip code range and are then notified via return e-mail with any changes in parking inventory."