Guggenheim Entity Draws Post Position for Harrisburg Garage Lease

An entity created by Guggenheim Securities will negotiate exclusively with Harrisburg to manage the parking garages in Pennsylvania’s capital, the city’s state-appointed receiver said Wednesday.

The company, Harrisburg First, emerged from a field of 14 bidders that members of Lynch’s office screened.

“We’re very pleased and that should bring us to a point where we can get serious about dealing with these assets and see where we can go to make something happen that would be beneficial to the city,” receiver William Lynch said at a regular financial recovery session at City Hall.

Lynch said the parking-garage transaction could be categorized a sale, but be structured more like a lease. “Some of these things are lawyer terms of art,” he said.

Guggenheim Securities is a unit of investment firm Guggenheim Partners, which has headquarters in New York and Chicago and has more than $160 billion under management.

Also behind Harrisburg First are Standard Parking Corp. and AEW Capital Management LP. Standard Parking operates in more than 300 cities nationally.

Harrisburg is saddled with more than $340 million of debt, mostly related to incinerator retrofit financing overruns.

“Every time you turn over a rock, there’s something else to deal with,” Lynch said.

The receiver’s recovery plan calls for selling the incinerator, parking garages and sewer and wastewater systems.

Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority is negotiating exclusively to buy the incinerator.

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Pennsylvania
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