Chicago parking meters could soon be sold to a new private owner, N.Y.-based Stonepeak Partners

A New York-based investment firm has agreed to purchase Chicago's parking meter system from the company that purchased them in an infamous 75-year deal in 2008, but the deal still requires City Council approval.

Mayor Brandon Johnson's office confirmed Chicago Parking Meters LLC has agreed to transfer its rights to the city's parking meters to Stonepeak Partners.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed by the mayor's office, but the deal is subject to approval by the City Council, giving alders leverage to try to negotiate better terms for taxpayers.

An ordinance will be introduced to the City Council on Wednesday to begin the process of evaluating the sale of Chicago's parking meters to Stonepeak Partners.

Johnson's office said the city's Law Department and chief financial officer "will be available to provide technical assistance and answer any questions that may arise" as alders weigh whether to approve the sale.

In January, the mayor opted not to try to buy back the city's parking meters from Chicago Parking Meters LLC, after determining the cost was too high.

The 75-year lease of the city's parking meters has been widely panned since it was signed.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley convinced the City Council in 2008 to sell off Chicago's parking meters for $1.15 billion to help plug a city budget deficit. The company that bought the meters has already brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue from the deal, with 57 years still to go on the deal.

In January, Johnson said it likely would have cost the city at least twice as much as the original $1.15 billion price tag for the parking meters to buy them back.

"We had our teams run the numbers and look at every variation of a potential deal. However, the more we looked into it, the more problems emerged," Johnson said. "The final purchase price was far too high; much more than we initially received for the sale, and higher than most reasonable assumptions would support."

Johnson said the city would have had to take on a massive amount of debt to buy back the parking meters, and nearly 100% of any parking revenue collected by the city would have to go to paying off that debt for the next 40 years, and effectively force the city to raise parking rates every year to cover that cost.

The mayor also said the city would have faced the risk of parking habits changing significantly over the life of the contract, such as a rise in the number of self-driving cars or a dramatic increase in the use of public transit leading to a significant drop in parking revenue needed to pay off the cost of the contract.

"In short, this purchase would have made a bad deal even worse. The price is too high and requires debt service payments that extend too far and impose too much risk. Chicagoans would most likely end up footing the bill yet again for this original decision to privatize our parking," Johnson said.