Rental car company parks its fleet on residential streets

A rental car company that has been taking up parking spots on residential streets in Kingsbridge has promised to find new retail space to accommodate its fleet, and to free up on-street parking spaces for residents, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who has been working to resolve the issue, told The Press. 

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, a major car rental corporation, has drawn complaints from residents in Kingsbridge after one of its branches, located at W. 232nd Street and Broadway, began using residential streets in the neighborhood, instead of its own lot, to park its cars. 

Rosa Aracena, who lives on W. 232nd Street and Godwin Terrace, said the situation has become so bad she sometimes circles the neighborhood for hours looking for parking.

“If you’re looking for parking after six o’clock or seven o’clock, you don’t find parking,” she said. “They come in with a big truck and park in our street.”

Ms. Aracena said she often finds cars with the rental company’s stickers on their windshields parked all along W. 232nd Street and beyond.

Mr. Dinowitz said he and his staffers walked around the neighborhood in the morning on Aug. 3 and spotted 20 cars with Enterprise Rent-A-Car stickers.

Employees at the Enterprise branch confirmed they had to resort to street parking, telling The Press they use on-street spaces when the company’s own lot, which can hold about 20 cars, is full. 

“It depends on how overflowed we are,” said Cedric Skeyere, an Enterprise employee. “Let’s say after a holiday or long weekend there’s a ton of cars that don’t fit in the lot, that’s when we tend to park on the street.”

A half-dozen Enterprise cars were parked on residential streets when The Press visited the branch on Aug. 3, according to Mr. Skeyere’s estimate. 

Residents’ appeals to the branch were met with resistance, according to Ms. Aracena, who said he tried to speak with the manager twice. 

“The manager said that he doesn’t care, that he doesn’t do nothing illegal,” she said. 

She asked Mr. Dinowitz’ office for help last week, and the assemblyman’s aides also tried to work with the store, with little success, according to Mr. Dinowitz. 

“It is a legitimate complaint,” Mr. Dinowitz said. “It’s very hard to park in Kingsbridge as it is and it’s not like they move the cars away at night.”

As the practice is legal, Mr. Dinowitz called Enterprise’s corporate offices to find a solution.

“They’ve admitted that they’ve outgrown their location that they are in right now,” he said. “If they have more of their own space they won’t have to park on the street.”

The corporate offices have begun looking for new retail space in Kingsbridge that will provide the branch with enough space to house its fleet in the long run, Mr. Dinowitz said. 

In the meantime, Mr. Dinowitz said the office will limit the number of cars it has in its possession at any given time and will increase the number of drivers to move the cars regularly.

“They were certainly very eager to try to resolve the situation and work with the neighborhood,” Mr. Dinowitz said. “I have had communications with Enterprise before … I was pleased to be able to speak to people there that I knew to reach out to.”