Emmen municipality and parking operator Q-Park will soon clash in court. The focus is on P-Zuid, the parking lot in Wildlands. The site is currently still managed by Q-Park, but the municipality has cancelled the lease. The operator must leave the site in June 2025, but has indicated that it will refuse to do so. Emmen is therefore preparing a summons.
Emmen Municipality manages all large car parks and parking lots in the city of Emmen. The only exception is P-Zuid. The municipality is the landowner of this site, but has issued a long-term lease to Wildlands. The zoo has signed a contract with Q-Park to operate it at that time.
The municipality now wants to put a stop to this and put the site under its own management. This way, the municipality can maintain tighter control and draw a line in its parking policy, according to councillor Jan Bos.
According to Boss, the lease is about to expire. “They want to extend and we don’t. But the contract says that this is the expiration date. We now understand from Q Park that they want to continue.”
Boss could only guess at the underlying motive. “It would have to do with income. They might think they can extract certain rights from the fact that they have been in P-Zuid for a while.”
According to a spokesperson, Q-Park said the matter was a matter of “difference of opinion” regarding the current lease. “Q-Park wishes to continue the lease in accordance with the agreement and continue to operate the site in the same manner,” it said. “We are awaiting the judge’s decision on this matter.”
This is not the first time that Q-Park and the municipality have faced each other in court. The two sides argued over parking prices as early as 2016. Emmen felt that the operator did not have a customer-friendly policy. Visitors who parked at P-Zuid were charged one euro for the first half hour. Then the daily rate of more than ten euros had to be paid immediately. The municipality thought this was too harsh.
Q-Park responded by saying the municipality had to raise its prices or there would be unfair competition. Years of legal action followed.