City Tech Collaborative, Millennium Garages, SP+, and Arrive Launch New Innovation Lab
City Tech Collaborative, Millennium Garages, SP+, and Arrive Launch New Innovation Lab
The Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab Will Envision and Implement New Urban Parking Solutions
Together with founding members Millennium Garages, SP+, and Arrive, City Tech Collaborative is launching the new Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab, a cross-sector consortium to envision and implement technology-enabled solutions that will position parking facilities to address critical urban challenges.
Cities are adapting to rapidly changing mobility needs and trends, including rideshare, micromobility, and delivery services. Communities are setting goals to increase connectivity between transit modes, make better use of existing resources, address climate goals, and improve quality of life and equity for residents. As a crucial component of the transportation system, the parking industry must evolve, as well. Reconsidering the role of critical urban assets – including parking facilities – creates opportunities to improve economic, environmental, and social outcomes.
“Physical spaces – like parking garages – hold infinite potential to be an asset to cities beyond their current use,” said Rick West, CEO of Millennium Garages. “Parking garages may become transportation hubs and critical links within multimodal journeys, and we are actively seeking ways to demonstrate new technology-enabled solutions to keep the parking industry relevant and efficient and to be strong partners to cities as they seek to enhance services to their residents.”
City Tech and partners are reimagining parking real estate as a gateway to connect to other modes and services; the partnership seeks to more fully integrate parking into the broader mobility landscape – including public transit, ride- and vehicle-sharing, electrification, and automation – as well as explore innovative facility management, freight and logistics hub opportunities, and other creative space uses for cities.
Spanning 3.8 million square feet and providing access to Chicago’s top tourist destinations and the business district, Millennium Garages is the largest downtown public parking system in the United States and is believed to be the largest underground parking system in the world. The complex includes an underground network of four garages connecting Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, and Grant Park, as well as provides access to the highway network, underground pedway, and Millennium Station. Millennium Garages serves as the anchor facility for the Lab, and the partnership is engaging parking facility owners and operators across North America to explore other locations to demonstrate use cases.
Joining Millennium Garages as Founding Members of the Millennium Gateway, SP+ and Arrive bring extensive operational experience, technical expertise, geographic reach, and scaling opportunities. SP+ provides technology- driven mobility solutions to clients across North America, including parking and facility management, ground transportation, remote baggage check-in, and event logistics. Arrive’s skill in integrating vehicle navigation, access, and payment systems, voice platforms, websites, mobile apps, and other cutting-edge technology – paired with City Tech’s ability to create collaborative, scalable, market-ready solutions – will further strengthen the Lab’s impact.
Later this spring, City Tech will be releasing the Lab’s roadmap to integrate parking solutions across the mobility system [see the Advanced Mobility Initiative roadmap here]. The three-year plan will outline specific areas for solution development, such as increasing public transit access, optimizing smart infrastructure management, and establishing creative space utilization for businesses.
The Lab’s first planned project will use sensors to gather real-time information at electric vehicle charging stations; with this capability, garage managers will be able to communicate EV spot availability to drivers ahead of time, as well as track EV spot occupancy to inform pricing and additional capital investments.
“In all of our work, we engage a broad set of industry, technology, civic, and community stakeholders to ensure that solutions are developed in a comprehensive, collaborative way to solve real world problems,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech. “Developing solutions through a robust partner ecosystem helps us deliver scalable, maintainable, and measurable impact on cities.”
Founding Members of the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab are Millennium Garages, SP+, and Arrive. The National Parking Association – which represents over 100,000 parking professionals – and the International Parking & Mobility Institute – the world’s largest association of professionals in parking, transportation, and mobility – will lend their expertise in parking industry research, education, and professional development as Strategic Partners to the Lab.
The Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab is one of many projects within City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, an effort led by Founding Members Bosch, HERE Technologies, and Microsoft and support from over 20 industry partners to create a more seamless and frictionless transportation system with increased accessibility and reach for urban residents. Other projects within the Advanced Mobility Initiative include mitigating freight delivery congestion, managing curbside space through demand-driven value models, and a partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Innovation Center. [More about the Advanced Mobility Initiative and related projects here.]
For more information about the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab, contact City Tech Collaborative
About Arrive
Arrive powers the last mile of mobility through smart parking solutions. It offers the only seamless mobility experience that predicts and recommends the best parking solution for any journey. Arrive powers smart parking and other connected mobility services through apps, websites, voice platforms, and in-dash integrations to hundreds of clients including smart cities, automakers, fleets, venues, navigation and voice platforms, as well as to its own ParkWhiz and BestParking consumer brands. For more information, visit www.Arrive.com.
About City Tech
City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected construction, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org for more information and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Millennium Garages
Millennium Garages LLC is a joint venture by infrastructure fund partners that control a long-term, exclusive concession rights and responsibilities for the 3.8 million square foot Millennium Garages system in downtown Chicago.
About SP+
SP+ facilitates the efficient movement of people, vehicles and personal belongings with the goal of enhancing the consumer experience while improving bottom line results for our clients. The Company provides professional parking management, ground transportation, remote baggage check-in and handling, facility maintenance, security, event logistics, and other technology-driven mobility solutions to aviation, commercial, hospitality, healthcare and government clients across North America. Visit for more information visit www.SPPlus.com.