Uptown Valet growing business in downtown Columbus

What started as a conversation among friends over lunch has now turned into a downtown business that currently operates in the 1100 block of Broadway on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Brad Clements, a local Certified Public Accountant, and Jerry Watts, a local attorney, are the managing partners in Uptown Valet LLC. The company is offering valet parking services for people coming downtown on those three nights. It has been in operation for about six weeks.

"Being a valet helped get me through law school," said Watts, who parked cars in Buckhead.

So, when the topic of downtown came up earlier this year as Watts, Clements, Ben Brannin and Blair Carnahan were having lunch downtown, it made sense. But first they had to see if they could pull it off, so they met with Uptown Columbus Inc. President Richard Bishop.

"We put together a business plan and pitched it to Richard back in May," Watts said.

Bishop liked the idea.

"I think it gives added value ," Bishop said. "These guys have done this before and they went at it in a professional way."

They had to figure out where to set up and how much to charge. After discussions with Bishop and looking at the traffic flow into downtown, they decided to make the gazebo in the 1100 block across from the Subway restaurant the

base. Valets sit in the gazebo waiting for people to pull up and customers can use it to wait for their car to be retrieved.

The company is putting traffic cones in the middle of the street on both sides to create two lanes. That allows those using the service to pull close to the median and traffic to squeeze past.

The cars are being parked in the CB&T garage at 11th Street and First Avenue. Uptown Valet is charging $7 per vehicle and operating between the hours of 5:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Bishop said operating out of the 1100 block makes the most sense as the company builds its business and those coming downtown become more aware of the service.

The company has been parking between 20 and 30 vehicles on its busiest nights.

"As Uptown continues to build out," Watts said, "we expect the demand for this to go up.

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Uptown Valet growing business in downtown Columbus ."