Top parking lot owner switches hands for over $1 billion

TIAA Private Investments and Antarctica Capital have acquired InterPark, a Chicago-based owner and operator of parking garages, from Alinda Capital Partners. No financial terms were disclosed, but a source tells Axios that it was in the ballpark of $1.1 billion. Other members of the buyside consortium included Silverpeak (which will focus on real estate), CIC Capital, China Life, Munich Re and PFA Pension.

Why it matters: InterPark is America's largest parking garage owner and operator, with 57 lots containing 49,000 spaces. Most municipal lots are actually owned by building landlords (who can play havoc with rent costs).

History: Alinda had purchased InterPark for a bit over $300 million from GE Real Estate in 2011, although later invested another $150 million to both add lots and modernize the infrastructure, per a source familiar with the situation.

Bottom line: Municipal parking garages may be heading toward an inflection point (yes, I just wrote that), as we head toward autonomous driving. All sides of cash-flow could look quite different by the time TIAA and Antarctica Capital are ready to sell, with some real estate investors already looking at parking garages as future greenfield properties. For now, this is another case of private equity profiting from real estate-related deals done in the aftermath of the financial crisis.