Where parking is only part of it - Carter's VSP Airport Parking - company profile

Where Parking Is Only Part Of It Carter's VSP Airport Parking, located on Hollywood Way across the street from the Burbank, Calif., airport, is a parking lot with a difference. It is a place for the pampered Porsche, the mothered Maserati, the fawned-over Ferrari. It is the automotive equivalent of the "A" party list, a place where your Corvette or Saab can be roped off from the flotsam and jetsam that would normally sidle alongside with impunity.

You know the normal routine when you drive to an airport. Take a ticket from a machine. Drive in circles looking for a spot. Worry about leaving your car exposed to the elements, to thieves in search of stereos, to the sharp-edged doors of other cars parking beside yours. Trek to the terminal. Repeat the journey when you return and hope you have enough cash on hand to get out of the lot.

At Carter's, a $1 million six-level lot built in 1978, the routine is a little different. An attendant meets you at the entrance. While he tells you which spaces are available, another attendant loads your luggage onto a shuttle van, which will take you to your terminal within five minutes. (Burbank Airport is about one-eighth the size of LAX, Los Angeles' primary airport.) When you return, you can call the garage from the airport on a courtesy phone and the van will again be there within five minutes. Get your car, have the attendant load your luggage and pay your bill--with a credit card, if you want.

"We saw a real need for a place like this," says Doug Carter, 42, who owns the garage with his wife Joan. "People don't like leaving expensive cars unprotected in public lots, and they're usually willing to pay for good service."

Seems like he is right. On a recent day, a quick check of Carter's turned up three Porsches, 11 Mercedeses, four BMWs, two Corvettes, two Volvos, one Maserati, one Lincoln and a Saab. Not the low-rent district.

With all that fancy metal, you might think Carter's would attract car thieves and vandals. But there has not been a single act of vandalism since the garage opened. Heavy metal bars, curved and pointed at the top, block all entrances and make the garage singularly unattractive to criminals. "Besides," Carter says, "why should they struggle to try getting in this place when they can just walk into the [airport] lot across the street?"

Carter's started as a service station run by Doug's father, Jim, in 1955. In 1978, the 250-car garage was built on land adjoining the station. Today, Carter's is the temporary home to about 3,000 cars monthly and grosses "somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million a year," according to Doug Carter.

The secret is really no secret--plain old-fashioned service, and prices that are often lower than the airport lot. Carter's daily rates range from $8 for rooftop spaces to $12 for premium stalls, which are 10 feet wide instead of the usual 8-1/2 and are surrounded by a rope to guarantee no more dings to nervous owners. The public lot charges from $4 a day at remote locations to $18 a day in covered spots.

Carter has also worked at developing business clients and now has more than 70 who pay $200 a year--in addition to the regular parking fee--to reserve a space in the lot. Individuals can reserve a space on their credit cards for $10 (in addition to the parking fee). About 20 companies rent spaces by the month, at 25 to 30 percent off the day rate. "Corporations like knowing there is a good, safe place where their executives or clients can park and get to the terminal quickly," Carter says. "A corporation can just leave a company car here at all times for its employees."

Five television monitors help Carter's 17 employees keep track of which garage spaces are open. Eight walkie-talkies keep Carter in touch with the shuttle vans, entrance and baggage attendants and any employee who may be called on to, say, put air in a customer's low tire or jump-start a car for $4.

In Los Angeles, where you are what you drive and where some people swear they spend more time in their cars than in their homes, Doug Carter is cruising in the fast lane.

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