Britton Stansell knows his downtown Chattanooga company doesn’t have a large fan base, even if it has a large user base.
“It’s easy for parking companies to get a bad rap,” Stansell, founder and CEO of private parking manager BrightBase, said in an interview at his office on Chestnut Street.
Around 5,000 cars park each day in the 51 parking properties BrightBase manages for private owners, and the company is proud to be local. Its parking tickets list a number to call and a downtown office to visit to contest violations.
“We do take a lot of pride in physically touching properties every day, making sure they’re clean, making sure they look good,” Stansell said. “We’re not a company that’s located in California that comes and sets up a few signs and then leaves town.”
BrightBase is by far the largest manager of privately owned parking in downtown Chattanooga, and unlike publicly owned parking, its prices often rise at times of higher demand. Many of its lots cost $10 an hour after 4 p.m.