I'm getting a parking spot!

I'm getting a parking spot!!! *does happy dance*

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering why I need a parking spot when I don't have a car to park!

When I moved into this building there were 8 visitor parking spots. Two years ago after they did the building renovations, they removed 4 of the visitor parking spots in favour of more resident spots. Last year they removed the rest.

Which now means that anyone who wants to visit has to try and find a spot on the street, which isn't easy because it's a short street that feeds a community centre / park, our building which has 82 apartments, plus another apartment building; not to mention people who park on the street because it's free, and then either walk or bus to the downtown area to go to work. This often means that visitors have to park a few blocks away. Not so fun in the winter months.

My brother hasn't been able to come visit me for a long time because he has severe respiratory problems and can't walk very far, so now that I have a parking spot, he can come visit me again!!

An extra $40 added to my rent, but I think it's worth it.

Oh, it's definitely worth it! Congratulations! I remember when a GF was trying to find a condo in Chicago. She was so happy because the one she eventually chose had two parking spots and one of them was actually in a garage! She was doing a Happy Dance all over the place, she was so excited. She paid dearly for that spot in the garage and she said it was worth every penny.

That's something that I simply take for granted. We have our house and we have our driveway and people just park in the driveway. We don't even think about needing parking spaces. (Now a garage, OTOH..........)

I would love living in the city, except for the parking thing.

Congrats, it should be nice.

You do take it for granted. Until a few years ago there was a school across the street, so if we had people over there was actually a giant empty parking lot on weekends. It wasn't great during the week though, because it didn't have enough parking if there was ever an event. Our driveway is narrow, so only one of us usually parks in it. My DH gets home first and always parks at the bottom. I would have to call him and tell him to move if I didn't want to park blocks away. The next morning I would usually have to get up early so he could get out of the driveway.

82 apartments and no visitor parking? Wow! Definitely worth it to have your own spot. We have designated spots at our building, but they're not numbered. So when people come to visit or new tenants move in, there's usually a bit of annoyance about people parking in others spots.

You might want to check on the parking space now and then. When people see an empty spot day after day they will start using it, especially on the day(s) your brother visits, 'cause that's how the world seems to work lol.

SwampWitch said:

 
You might want to check on the parking space now and then. When people see an empty spot day after day they will start using it, especially on the day(s) your brother visits, 'cause that's how the world seems to work lol.

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I've already thought about that. I have no problem calling a tow truck!  LOL

Natalie_ca said:

I've already thought about that. I have no problem calling a tow truck!  LOL

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Or annoy people and park a bike or a little motorized cart there. 

"I paid for my spot, so WHATCHA GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!" 

Fhi09 said:

 
Or annoy people and park a bike or a little motorized cart there.

"I paid for my spot, so WHATCHA GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!" 

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   I'm actually going to go and look for a sign that says "RESERVED" and something with "UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED"

You might want to print out some notes to put on windshields before you tow, since these are your neighbours. One warning per car maybe, then call the tow truck on the second offence.

Natalie_ca said:

 

   I'm actually going to go and look for a sign that says "RESERVED" and something with "UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED"

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Ooh, that's a great solution. Reserved signs are usually a good deterrent.

Great news!   I ran into the caretaker today.  She said there was another spot available immediately if I wanted it.  It was a in the same area, but facing another direction, and at the end of the row.  I told her that ideally I was hoping for a spot closer to the front door, and pointed to the spot that I was coveting for a couple reasons:

1.  It's close to the door

2.  There is no other car on the driver's side, so if I got a car, I wouldn't have to worry about someone parking next to me and me not being able to open the driver door wide enough for me to get into the vehicle. I'm a large girl, so that is a real concern.  I'm back in the mood to think about getting a car again. I go back and forth. I just can't reconcile the expense. Maybe now that I'll have a parking spot, it might motivate me more!  LOL

She told me that that spot was actually coming available for August 1st!!  So as of that date it's mine!!

The colours are as follows:

Yellow =  the initial spot offered to me for July 1st

Pink     =  the spot available now

Green =   the spot I'm getting.

The building is really long, and it's about 1/4 city block to the pink parking spot.  So that shows the distance.  In the winter, being closer to the door will be perfect!

The neighborhood I live in has a shopping center with a pub, coffee shop, and the "Ballroom", which is basically a concert/wedding venue. The place is a hipster paradise, so it's almost always busy, but especially on the weekends or any night there's a concert. The result is the open parking I can see from my living room window is usually full. Then there's parking in the lot down by the river, which is a fairly long walk and a huge flight of stairs for us. But even that is usually full, especially when the upper parking is full. The result is that my roommate is often stuck parking way down at the edge of the river because all spaces will be full.

I'm lucky in that all three bedroom apartments get one space in the garage, which is $50/month for those in one- and two-bedroom apartments or for those who need an extra space. It's a walk for me, since I live in the apartment that is literally the farthest away from the garage, but there's an elevator that allows me to skip the stairs, and I don't have to worry about weather or what events are happening to screw with our neighborhood parking. Although, I think all spaces are currently rented, so there's always a risk that someone without a permit will park in the garage leaving one of us without a space. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I have seen a couple of cars without permits in there lately. I won't hesitate to have a car towed if I come home late to no spot. 

When I was in nursing school I lived 1/2 block from a hospital and across from a school.  There was never any parking for visitors for blocks and blocks and blocks. The spots on the street were always taken up by the staff from the hospital 24/7.  Just before we moved our building petitioned the city to block off 6 spots on the street in front of the building for residential parking only.

Prior to that I had lived in a house 1 house away from a busy church, that didn't have a parking lot. It seemed that the church always had some kind of service/function going on most days of the week, and again, as a result it was hard to find parking on the street for visitors.  Our yard was one of the few that didn't have a back fence along the back lane. As a result, sometimes someone from the church would decide to park in our back yard on the GRASS!  One day I called over to the church and told them that if the car wasn't immediately moved that it was going to be towed away.  Talk about nerve parking on someone's lawn!

Wow. Unbelievable that someone would be so rude as to park on your grass. Who does that? I take it they moved it quickly?

This makes my previous parking issues, when I lived in a house and parked on the street seem super minor, but they were annoying at the time. After about seven years of living there, the third family to live in the house to our left hired a nanny. I didn't know that's who drove the vehicle at the time, only that their SUV was parking in front of my house each day. This forced me to park in front of their house. How does that make sense?

So one day, thoroughly fed up with parking in front of their house and walking up the hill, past this dilapidated SUV in front of my home, I go knock on the door. The nanny answered and explained that her boss didn't want her parking her SUV in his driveway (which could easily hold four cars) and that parking in front of his house blocked their mailbox, ignoring that parking a few feet back, as I did, remedied that. He (my neighbor) had proven himself to be an [expletive] before, but that really took the cake. So I politely but sternly told her to stop blocking my spot and park where I had been parking instead.

It wasn't even the burden of the walk or the fact that I couldn't see my car from my window; it was the stupidity of the situation that bothered me.

Several years ago, the house across the road from us was for sale. We had had a really bad snowstorm that year and we had just shoveled our driveway out. I was working second shift that day and I was getting ready for work. Went to leave the house, only to find out that the realtor who was showing the house across the street from us was parked in the bottom of our driveway. And the car from the people who were viewing the house was parked there as well.I couldn't get out of the driveway to go to work.

Well, that's just rude and I was.....more than peeved. I hiked my butt down that driveway and into the knee-deep snow-covered driveway of the house across the street. Walked in and everybody was in the kitchen. Told them to get their   vehicles out of my   driveway   NOW. Didn't take them long either. When I finally got to work, I called the real estate company and told them that if anybody EVER parked in my driveway again, I was going to call the police and I would have their cars towed. And that if they were going to show a house, the least they could do is make sure the driveway was plowed. 

Church...now there's an emergency worth trespassing over.   

Natalie_ca said:

 

   I'm actually going to go and look for a sign that says "RESERVED" and something with "UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED"

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Find one that says    DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE 

When I lived in Gainesville, FL, one of the housed I lived in was two short blocks from the campus. Parking on the street is regulated by the University for a 5 block radius from the campus. The place had a yard where the residents could park, and a lot of times it was full of cars that didn't belong there. One day they towed 6 cars out of the yard. On the other hand, when there was a home football game, we would charge $10 to park there, buy a keg and dogs and burgers and chips, and proceed to party and guard the cars at the same time. The towing charge at the time was $135, so people were glad to pay the ten bucks.

LaraLove said:

Wow. Unbelievable that someone would be so rude as to park on your grass. Who does that? I take it they moved it quickly?

 

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The house that was next to us, on the corner also had problems with church goers parking in their back yard.  They had a fence and a parking pad that was in front of their garage door.  Occasionally, she would find a stranger's car parked on the parking pad blocking her garage door.  She had a few cars towed.

That car that I called over about was moved, but not until the church service was over!  Either they didn't get the message, or they just didn't care.

A few other times cars parked there, and I didn't bother calling. I just called a tow truck.  My BFF at that time was dating the owner of a tow truck company, so I would get prompt service for tow requests, so when I called, the car was towed within 30 minutes; long before church was over.

Some people can be so ignorant.  To this day I still can't believe the nerve of those people parking in someone's back yard on the grass.

peaches08 said:

 
Church...now there's an emergency worth trespassing over. 

 

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