Nashville Standard

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought economic devastation the like of which Travis Jarrett, general manager in Premier Parking's Nashville office, has never seen.

"My industry, that I have been a part of for my entire professional career, has come to a screeching halt," Jarrett told the Nashville Standard. "It was as if the solid ground I know and expect to be underfoot, suddenly became nothing - a void looming around the fact that a pandemic had reached our shores and infiltrated the heart of our industry."

Industry revenues have dropped more than 90 percent and Nashville area parking, "once a precious resource, is now as common as the air we breath," Jarrett said.

Jarrett is not the only Premier Parking official who has made this sobering observation.

Further up the company ladder last week, Premier Parking COO William Clay called for more help to 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 but 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," Premier Parking COO William 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, in no small part providing services at concerts, sporting and other events. Those events 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 has 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 was quoted as telling the Tennessee Business Daily. "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 last week when the U.S. Labor Department reported that a record-breaking 6.6 million U.S. workers signed up for unemployment benefits.

The suddenness of the crisis is a large part of what has made the COVID-19 pandemic so difficult to comprehend.

"It's hard to imagine being in this seat a month ago and underwriting big lease deals and acquisitions, to being the same seat today with an entire public that no longer needs our company’s services," Clay told Tennessee Business Daily. "It happened seemingly overnight."

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.”

Jarrett was witness to that in the Nashville area.

"The past three weeks have been - and I hope they will always be - the most difficult three weeks of my professional career," he said. "The fact that my team members, who have been loyal and dedicated to my company for over 10 years, were laid off from their source of income that was necessary to feed, clothe and house their families stops me in my tracks every day."