Parking-Garage Operator With ‘Image Problem’ Loses Franchise

Ken Handman, a local businessman who said last month that he was fighting an image war with City Hall bureaucrats, has lost his bid to continue managing two King Harbor parking structures for the city of Redondo Beach.

A selection committee had recommended hiring another firm, and early Wednesday morning the City Council ratified that decision. The council’s unanimous vote came near the end of a 10-hour session that lasted until 4:30 a.m.

City officials said Handman, who was seen in the council chambers around 1 a.m., had left by the time the parking decision came up for discussion. He did not present his case for keeping the parking franchise, which his firm has held for 22 years.

Handman, owner of Hill Parking Systems, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Other Firm Favored

In its report for the April 18 council meeting, the parking selection committee favored Executive Parking Inc. of West Los Angeles. Executive Parking was favored despite asking to be paid $47,400 annually to manage the parking facilities for three years, $27,000 more than Handman sought for the same period.

The committee noted that Executive Parking representatives wore business suits and “performed admirably” at their interview, while Handman showed up in casual beach style and complained about the city’s reluctance to replace aging equipment at the parking structures.

On April 18, Handman got the council to delay its decision for two weeks, saying he had just received the parking panel’s unfavorable report. Handman contended that the selection process was unfair because it gave more weight to style than to substance.

Harbor Director Sheila Schoettger said a search was made outside the council chambers early Wednesday morning, but Handman, who had been waiting his turn since the meeting began at 6:30 the night before, was nowhere to be found.

Neither was hardly anyone else at that hour, near the end of one of the longer Redondo Beach council meetings in years. It wound up at 4:30 a.m., a city official reported.

Much of the session was devoted to a debate about renewing Coast Christian School’s lease and to a lengthy list of public hearings on building projects. Handman’s appeal was one of the last items on the agenda.

Last month, after learning that the parking panel had recommended Executive Parking, Handman said that city officials were holding his casual-but-upscale style against him. He said he also may have “rubbed some people the wrong way” because of his “abrasive” manner in past disputes with officials, particularly over the aging equipment that measures how long people park and computes the charges.

Schoettger, the harbor director, said Wednesday that she had no comment on any image problems Handman may have. But, she observed, applicants for jobs “impress people in a number of ways, and some of them can be ephemeral and hard to quantify.”

On the more tangible side, she said, the committee’s reasons for faulting Handman included his failure to use “state-of-the-art” computer systems to track receipts at the Redondo Pier and Plaza parking structures.

Must Acquire Extras

She said the city supplies the machines that spit out tickets, but it’s left up to the operators to acquire extras like computers. Companies such as Executive Parking do that, she said.

At the beginning of the council meeting Tuesday night, Handman was waiting near the door of the chambers. His blue coat and tan slacks looked new, and for a change he had added a tie. He said he was trying to counter “that image they’ve stuck on me.”

After several hours of waiting, Handman’s spiffy appearance began to fade. There were wrinkles in his coat, and he had loosened his tie until it hardly hung on his neck.

By 1 o’clock in the morning, he appeared bedraggled and bleary-eyed--like most everyone else still haunting the council lobby at that hour.

“I don’t know when my turn is coming,” he said glumly.

He had to be in a distant city later that morning, he said.