Hamilton Reporter

Patrick Kelly, furloughed from his job last month as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, is including "former account manager at Premier Parking" in his email signature line.

The Ooltewah man was one of hundreds of the parking and driving company employees laid off.

Kelly said he doubts the company will call him back, so long as there are doubts about whether the company will survive the pandemic.

"Well, it ended my career with a company and in a business that I loved," Kelly told the Hamilton Reporter. "I started out as a valet driver with Parking Management Company in 2016 and due to my experience and training, I quickly was offered an account management position with Premier."

Kelly said he knows his layoff was out of Premier Parking's hands.

"Obviously, due to the pandemic and government insistence, the demand for parking is almost non-existent in Knoxville," Kelly said. "After a job that I relocated for, and have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into, I've been let go. I have no promise of return due to the massive impact that this is having on our company as a whole."  

Like Kelly, officials at Premier Parking are concerned that the unknown economic impact of the pandemic will prove fatal to the company and seriously affect the entire industry.

While Kelly said while the parking industry will recover "eventually", it won't happen without some pain. 

"Once things inevitably get back to normal, people will still need parking services and many will be able to get their jobs back in the industry," he said. "It may mean companies going under but that's the nature of the market." 

In the meantime Kelly said he has personal reasons to hope Premier Parking will survive and call him back to work soon.

"I have type 1 diabetes," he said. "I'm now having get on an insurance plan with my wife, which will cost us much more out of pocket. I'm also concerned about the situation and its impact on my three-year-old little girl."

Last week Premier Parking COO William Clay called for more help to start flowing to his industry that has been hard hit by the economic freefall wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The phase III stimulus package, which included extended unemployment benefits, passed by the U.S. House and Senate last month likely will help most of Premier Parking's furloughed employees. However, the company also is struggling, Clay said.

"We are asking that the parking industry [NAICS 812930] be recognized as an industry in need of assistance, and we are asking for business interruption insurance to be granted to our company [and others like us] in this time of great need," Clay told Tennessee Business Daily.

Premier Parking employs more than 2,000 associates in more than 600 locations in more than 40 cities across the nation. It provides services at concerts, sports and other events.

Those events now are postponed or canceled, drying up Premier Parking's business as the company's customers are largely stuck at home waiting out the crisis. That led to the furlough of hundreds of Premier Parking's employees.

"[The coronavirus] has caused devastation to our company and to our family of employees as we've been forced to lay off hundreds of employees over the past two weeks," Clay said. "This has been the most difficult two weeks of my professional life. Revenues are down 90-plus percent across the board as most CBDs are shelter-in-place and employees are working from home."

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was starkly illustrated earlier this week when the U.S. Labor Department reported that a record-breaking 6.6 million signed up last week for unemployment benefits.

The majority of Premier Parking's workforce are in field operations and they include valet drivers at hotels, also shut down by the crisis, and shuttle bus drivers for hotel employees who also have been largely furloughed.

"Through no fault of their own, their lives have been turned upside down, Clay said. "They lost a steady job with a reliable paycheck and are facing repercussions that may seem insurmountable for many.”