Cars being towed from Downtown Lodi parking lot
Earlier this month, Kerrie Kennedy, owner of Visible Changes Salon on South School Street, said she noticed cars were being towed from the Bank of America parking lot near her business, including after the bank’s business hours and on weekends.
“In the last two weeks, I would say probably 40 cars have been towed,” Kennedy said as she colored a client’s hair on Tuesday. “Now I’ve got signs to warn everybody.”
Kennedy’s employees and clients alike had been using the bank’s parking lot for years without issue, she said, it was only recently that cars began to be towed.
Colleen Haggerty, senior vice president of media relations for Bank of America, said in an email last Friday that the bank leases parking spots for their customers during business hours, but does not monitor the spaces after business hours or on weekends.
“We would only contact a towing company if a car has been parked in one of our customer spots for an extended period of time during business hours and we could not confirm the vehicle owner was parked to do bank business at the time,” Haggerty said in the email. “It is my understanding that the parking lot owner uses a towing company that regularly monitors the lot.”
The towing company could not be identified or reached for comment.
Lodi City Manager Steve Schwabauer said half of the lot is owned by the city with permit parking and 90-minute parking spaces available.
“The (downtown) parking lots were initially structured to do the best we could to generate the type of turnover that would make the downtown businesses successful,” Schwabauer said.
Kennedy said there are not enough permit parking spaces to go around, and that the majority of her clients’ appointments take longer than 90 minutes.
“Almost every one of our clients have to go and move their cars,” Kennedy said. “Us girls, too. We have to check our cars every day.”
As some of her employees work until late at night and do not feel safe walking to the parking garage on Sacramento Street in the dark while carrying cash, Kennedy feels it is unfair for cars to be towed after the bank’s business hours.
“Some of the girls don’t get off work until 10 p.m.., and we don’t all work at the same time,” Kennedy said. “The city needs to change our parking spots from 90 minutes to three hours.”
“I haven’t heard any requests to change that in a few years,” Schwabauer said. “If a group like the Downtown Business Alliance were to come to us, we would consider it.”
Kathy Thomas, owner of Thomas’ Favorite Things in between Visible Changes and the parking lot, said she has noticed a decline in her business since the towings began.
“I just had a lady in here who had gone to the bank, and she stopped by to browse afterward. I told her she’d better go back outside because (the towing company) was watching,” Thomas said on Tuesday. “Since then, it’s been dead. There’s no place to park.”
Thomas said Bank of America had been threatening to start towing cars for months, and that she does not believe the bank sees enough clients to fill up their 30 parking spaces each day during business hours, let alone after hours and on weekends.
“They’re towing at night and they’re towing on Sundays, so nobody can go eat at a restaurant,” Thomas said. “It’s just getting ridiculous.”
In addition to her own idea of issuing parking citations instead of towing cars, Thomas shared Kennedy’s idea of changing the 90minute parking spaces to three-hour spaces which she feels would be more beneficial to businesses in Downtown Lodi.
“If they made it three hours, ladies could get their hair done, people could get lunch and come and look in the store and not have to worry about getting towed,” Thomas said. “Something’s got to be done.”