My neighbors and I are thoroughly disgusted that we are unable to park our cars on the street where we live, which is adjacent to the group of stores in which Shop Delight is situated.
There are six garden apartments on the residential part of Welwyn Road, only three of which have garages, and those garages are quite small and do not accommodate all the residents of those buldings.
Therefore, most of the residents living in the area have to street park their cars.
When Shop Delight is open (six days a week, from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., with an earlier closing time on Friday), their many non-resident employees illegally usurp almost all of the available parking spaces on the surrounding streets which have a three-hour parking limitation for non-residents.
The employee cars, which remain on the street for up to 12 hours a day, make it impossible for residents to park anywhere within a reasonable vicinity of their apartments.
Shop Delight’s conditional-use permit specifically stipulates that its employees should not park on the streets adjacent to the market as follows: “All persons who drive to work…shall obtain parking permits from the Village enabling them to park in the designated municipal parking garages…[and] shall in fact utilize the designated municipal parking garages.”
The employees violate this stipulation daily by parking on the street.
For several years I have persistently asked Shop Delight’s management to enforce the employee parking stipulations spelled out in their conditional use permit, but they make no effort to do so.
For several years I have also persistently asked Village officials and code enforcement to enforce the law by issuing overtime parking tickets to Shop Delight’s illegally parked employees, but code enforcement, as well as village officials, continue to bypass the cars and overlook the infractions.
Jean Celender has never responded to any of my multitude of emails and phone calls regarding our parking disaster.
Last week, after several years, I finally had an opportunity to meet with Deputy Mayor Ted Rosen at the Village Hall for what I thought would be an opportunity to address the impossible parking situation.
Unfortunately, Rosen’s agenda did not include the resident parking problem, other than announcing that code enforcement was doing its job well, having issued 200 tickets to the non-resident employees.
When I asked over what period of time the tickets had been issued, Rosen responded “from January 2017 to the present.”
Wow! Code enforcement issued 200 overtime parking tickets in 10 months — that’s 20 tickets per month; less than one ticket per day! A job well done!
Rosen refused further discussion about the lack of resident parking, saying that he didn’t have time to address the issue and he adjourned the meeting. What a waste of my time.
Not only does the village refuse to address the residents’ parking problem, they also refuse to acknowledge that the problem is caused entirely by Shop Delight—and not by any of the other businesses on the block.
While Shop Delight was closed for holidays for three days last week and three days this week, every other business on the block was open, and there were dozens of parking spaces all over the street. Just look at the attached photos taken in only one small area of the block at 3pm last Thursday afternoon while the market was closed.
When Shop Delight is open, it takes a miracle to find a place to park.
I can’t help but wonder why village officials are so protective of the illegally parked Shop Delight employees at the expense of the residents who elected them.
I also find it really difficult to understand how village officials can be so callous about this horrendous parking problem.
Lack of residential parking in this area could be easily alleviated. All the village has to do is enforce the terms of Shop Delight’s conditional use permit, but obviously they choose not to.
Maybe our Village officials think we should hang our cars from the trees. But alas, code enforcement would surely be instructed to ticket us for overtime tree parking.
Muriel Pfeifer
Village of Neck Plaza
(We want our “Great” back!)
