A residential neighborhood in Morris Park continues to be inundated with parkers using nearby health-related facilities.
Indian Village, a quiet, quaint neighborhood of Morris Park, has become a parking lot primarily for many employees who work at Jacobi Medical Center and students attending Albert Einstein College of Medicine who choose not to park in their facility’s lot, the residents charge.
According to many residents, employees and students from these establishments park their vehicles for two to three days, sometimes a week at a time, on their block.
There have even been instances where vehicles have been parked in the same spot on the street for two weeks straight.
Employees and students have been seen parking their vehicles on Seminole Avenue, which borders Jacobi, along with Neill Avenue, Choctaw and Pawnee places along Narragansett Avenue, and other locations in the neighborhood.
Although local residents are upset with these occurrences, they have mentioned that their frustrations have to do with parking on the quiet neighborhood’s roads, not Seminole Avenue, which sees more traffic on a daily basis.
“We’ll give them Seminole Avenue to park their vehicle,” said resident Frank Vignali, who has lived in Indian Village for over 30 years, and has witnessed this problem for nearly a decade.
“This is a constant problem that continues to get worse – why do they have to use our streets to park when these students and employees have parking lots of their own that they can use.”
“Many local residents, myself included, can tell that these vehicle belong to employees and students of the nearby medical facilities from the attire they wear and the backpacks they carry,” Vignali added.
“Parking on the street is not illegal, but the people parking need to have some common sense and not park for extended periods of time.”
As Vignali cited, parking on a residential street, with the exception of street cleaning, is not illegal unless otherwise posted.
However, parking in driveways, on the cusp of a driveway and in front of fire hydrants is illegal, and various vehicles in the neighborhood have broken each of these laws.
Residents confirmed that a red Nissa Sentra has parked in front of a fire hydrant on Neill Avenue on several occasions.
Local residents who choose to park their vehicles on the street have also said that their spots are taken as soon as they vacate them.
“As soon as you pull out of a parking space on the street, it is gone right away,” said Joe Chiariello, a life-long Indian Village resident. “There has also been a recent influx of gypsy cabs and they also park on the street overnight.”
“Some of these drivers can be arrogant,” said Florence Chiariello, Joe’s mom, a resident for almost 50 years. “They don’t care how they park – and if you tell them they’re on the curb or in the driveway, they respond with something like, ‘I’m not in your driveway,’ or ‘you’ll be able to exit the driveway just fine,’ when that is not the case. It’s complete madness.”
A spokesperson for Jacobi has said that although they can’t force their employees to park in their parking lots, they can persuade more employees to park there with affordable parking fees.
“Over the years, we have had many meetings and a continuous dialogue with our neighbors about parking issues in Indian Village,” said John Doyle, for Jacobi. “While we cannot compel our employees to purchase parking, we do offer on-campus parking options for all employees at an extremely affordable rate of about a dollar a day, and we will continue to do everything within our power to promote this with our employees and patients.”
Albert Einstein College of Medicine could not be reached for comment.
