Kinney Parking Company

Kinney Parking Company was a New Jersey parking lot company owned by Manny Kimmel, Sigmund Dornbusch, and mob figure Abner Zwillman.

Kinney Service Company

Formerly	Kinney Parking System Inc. (1945–1961)
Industry	Parking
Founded	1945 (1945)[1]
Founder	Manny Kimmel
Defunct	1961
Fate	Merged with Riverside Memorial to become a part of Kinney National Company
Successor	Kinney National Company
Area served	Newark, New Jersey
Key people	Steven J. Ross Caesar Kimmel
Owners	Manny Kimmel Sigmund Dornbusch Abner Zwillman

History

Kinney Parking Company was incorporated in 1945 by Manny Kimmel. In 1961, Kinney reached an agreement with Abbey Rent-A-Car (founded by Edward Rosenthal) whereby Abbey customers would park for free at Kinney lots in exchange for a 25% ownership interest in Abbey.^[2] The relationship was fruitful and in 1961, Rosenthal and Kimmel decided to merge the two companies with Rosenthal adding two additional companies he owned, Riverside Memorial Chapel and City Service Cleaning Contractors, Inc.^[2] The new entity was renamed Kinney Service Corporation and taken public.^[2] In 1964, Kinney purchased Walter B. Cooke, Inc., which operated nine funeral homes in New York.^[2] By 1964, the company had $29 million in sales and 6,000 cars in its fleet with 100 franchised auto dealers in six states who leased cars under the Kinney brand.^[2]

Final years, merger with National Cleaning

On July 28, 1965, Kinney Service Corporation announced that they would merge with Terminal Maintenance L.I. Inc., a Long Island building-cleaning and maintenance company,^[3] however, the merge didn't happen for unknown reasons.

In 1966, the firm merged with the National Cleaning Contractors, Inc. (established by Louis Frankel^[4] in 1886^[5] as National Window Cleaning and House Renovating Co).^[6] to form Kinney National Company, headed by Steve Ross, who had joined Riverside after marrying Carol Rosenthal, Edward Rosenthal's daughter.^[7] Ross pursued an aggressive expansion of the company's properties, first acquiring National Periodical Publications (publisher of DC Comics), followed by Ashley-Famous talent agency, Panavision, and finally Warner Bros.-Seven Arts in 1969.

Legacy

Kinney Services Corporation

Kinney Services was the result of a merger between Kinney Parking Company, Riverside Memorial, and their shared joint venture, Kinney System Rent-a-Car. Steve Ross was its CEO, and he took the company public in 1962. It purchased more funeral and cleaning businesses and eventually expanded into entertainment with its acquisitions of National Periodical Publications (predecessor to DC Comics) and eventually Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. By 1971 it offloaded a couple non media holdings and spun off its remaining non media assets to National Kinney Corporation.

Warner Communications

Amidst a financial scandal in its predecessor's parking operations, Kinney spun off all its non-media assets and renamed itself Warner Communications on February 10, 1972. Warner Communications established a cable division that would become the former Time Warner Cable, (now Spectrum) and purchased Atari, but suffered substantial losses with them. It merged with Time, Inc in 1990 and became the first of two iterations of the Time Warner company that is the now the present day Warner Bros. Discovery.

National Kinney

National Kinney expanded from parking and building services into real estate development by purchasing the Uris Buildings Corporation from Harold Uris, but timing was bad as the New York real estate market collapsed in the 1973–75 recession. The main Uris Building asset was soon lost to foreclosure.^[8]

In 1979, after some protracted negotiations, National Kinney attempted to purchase The Aladdin hotel and casino in Las Vegas in a joint venture with Johnny Carson, planning to rename it after the star. However, Carson's wife Joanna gossiped about the deal, and subsequent trading in National Kinney stock led to insider trading charges against third parties by the SEC and the disgorgement of profits.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

In 1982, National Kinney sold its National States Electric division to an undisclosed buyer,^[14] and then agreed to sell its parking subsidiary, Kinney System Inc., to that division's chairman Daniel Katz and a group of investors.^[15][16] In 1985, National Kinney subsequently renamed itself to Andal Corporation and sold its remaining majority interest in Kinney System parking.^[17][18] Andal invested in the declining Steve's Ice Cream and merged in Swensen's before selling them off and unwinding its last operating subsidiary.^[19][20][21]