The owner of the spots are the city but the owner of the parking meters are this corporation. The city will owe fees if they decide to change usage. So this is a sour deal because now they'll either have to leave them as open spots (waste) or pay this company for lost revenues if they change them (waste).

The ones in buildings and lots, sure, or they'll just set prices lower than street parking. The whole thing is still going to hurt the city by making it not worth going into. I know of "destination" specialty stores that have closed because adding an extra $4+ of parking to the cost of going there to shop made it not worthwhile. I personally was part of a group that used to meet for dinner at different restaurants every week, but Chicago restaurants got dropped from choices because an extra $8-10 on a meal gets you a much nicer (or less expensive) meal in the suburbs with free parking.