BATON ROUGE – Mayor Holden announced on Tuesday that three companies have been selected to manage the City-Parish public parking downtown.

The companies will help improve street and garage parking by providing better facility management, customer service and security along with modernizing the downtown parking system, according to City-Parish officials. The system will allow payment by credit cards and cell phones and using the latest technology to help drivers find available parking spaces.

The three companies are Lanier Parking Solutions, SMG Worldwide Entertainment and Convention Center Management and The Aaron Group.

"These companies are worldwide experts in off-street parking and venue management.   They will help make our parking system more user-friendly as well as help generate more revenues so that our parking system can be self-funded," Holden said.

The recommendation of using the companies will be submitted to the Metro Council in December for approval. Once approved, the contract will go into effect in early 2017.

Downtown currently has 850 street metered spaces, 1,350 spaces in the River Center parking garages, and 446 spaces in garages B-1 and B-2 at City Hall.