Johnson Ave. shoppers get tow truck's quick hook

By Megan James

Michael Kaye parked his car in the Key Food lot last Tuesday, ran across the street to an ATM and returned minutes later to find his car had been towed.

He’d come to buy a lottery ticket in Cappy’s Card Shop, one of the stores listed on the metal sign bolted to the entrance of the lot. Stepping into Cappy’s he realized he didn’t have any cash, so he walked across the street to CVS, where he noticed he’d forgotten his wallet altogether. Suspecting he left it in the car, Mr. Kaye headed back to the parking lot only to find his car was gone.

That’s when he noticed the man on a cell phone standing by the entrance to the lot. Minutes later he saw a tow truck pull in and take away another car.

Mr. Kaye isn’t the only Riverdalian in the last couple weeks who has forked over $108 to Riverdale Towing and Collision after parking in the Key Food lot.

Marilyn Feldman parked her brand new car in a handicapped spot — her handicapped sticker on display — at the lot last week. She did part of her shopping at Key Food, then walked across the street to run a few more errands.

She’d been gone a little over half an hour when she returned to finish her shopping at Key Food — she always buys her perishables last — but by then, her car was gone.

The Key Food manager gave Mrs. Feldman the phone number for Riverdale Towing and Collision and called a taxi for her and her husband. They found the car parked with its front against a fence and scratches on its back, Mrs. Feldman said.

The Feldmans used a credit card to pay the tow company, took their car and left.

“It’s not the idea of the money, it’s the idea that for the short time I was there, in a handicapped parking spot, someone was watching me,” Mrs. Feldman said.

According to George Constantinedes, the manager of the tow company, the property owner recently hired a maintenance crew to watch the lot and make sure people only shop at the stores on the property.

But this has some unsuspecting shoppers up in arms.

“If they’re going to take the trouble to put someone monitoring you in the there, why not just charge people to use the parking lot?” Mr. Kaye said. “If I was there for, like, four hours… I was there for 10 minutes. That’s predatory, and it’s not very neighborly.”

Mr. Kaye reported the incident to Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who has been handling towing complaints in the area for years. Riverdale Towing and Collision has had 24 complaints and has been issued three violations over the past two years, according to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

According to Mr. Dinowitz, the question is whether or not the signs are big enough and in the right places. As long as the property owner has proper signs, he is within his rights to tow cars that belong to people who are not shopping exclusively in his stores, he said.

Mr. Dinowitz has asked the Department of Consumer Affairs to examine the signs, and he has also given the owner of Key Food a piece of his mind.

“I think that they’ve been a bad neighbor,” he said. “The people are rightfully angry. They have someone in the lot who follows people out of the lot. It’s really an abuse.”

Mr. Dinowitz suggests that people contact his office if they are towed from the Key Food lot so he can figure out if their rights have been violated.

“The problem is there’s no appeal. If someone tows you, whether it’s legitimate or not, you can’t get your car unless you fork over the money,” he said. “My advice is don’t park in that lot, don’t go into Key Food and if you have a problem, call my office.”

Mr. Constantinides said he personally doesn’t care where people park.

“We don’t pick the cars we tow,” he said. He stressed that people should take responsibility when they park on private property.

“People are used to doing what they want and getting away with it,” he said. “If you’re not shopping in the stores that are physically in the lot, you don’t belong there.”

Jay Holtz, the manager at Dyckman Realty, the company that owns the lot, said he didn’t realize there was a such a big towing problem.

“There is no public parking,” he said, noting that he gets about two phone calls a month, and that people often tell him they left the lot to shop somewhere else.

“I don’t want to trap people, but if they want to go across the street, I just don’t have enough room to support parking,” he said.

Mr. Holtz apologized for causing an uproar, but said they’ve been towing for nearly three years and people should know by now that they can’t leave their cars there.

“If you tell me what I should put up, I will,” he said. ‘I’ll put up bigger signs if that helps.”

This is part of the August 7, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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