400 Philly Parking Lots May Be Illegal

PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia may be known for "Parking Wars," but not quite like this one.

An illegal lot is stirring up real trouble and threats even in Old City.

How can someone set up an illegal business right in the heart of Old City and get away with it?

City officials told one man to knock it off, but they didn't fine him a single dime. And they're giving him more than a month to keep cashing in.

We're talking about this one particular lot in Old City because it's really come to a head there. Plus, on First Friday, the battle for parking itself is tough – let alone when you add in a battle for your business.

What we've found is this is actually a widespread problem.

"Hey, Joe, what are you doing here?" Fox 29's Claudia Gomez asked the man running the lot.

"Who?" he asked.

"Your name's Joe?" Gomez followed-up.

"Yeah," he said, playing dumb even though just minutes earlier he and his buddy were diverting cars into a lot on Third Street.

Fox 29 cameras showed the man waving in a car and saying, "$20, 20 bucks."

He wouldn't answer any of Fox 29's questions.

When Gomez said, "You're charging people – you don't even have insurance," the man looked into the camera, waved and said, "Hi, Ma!"

A few minutes later, the man's buddy picked up an orange, painted sign with "$20" on one side and "$15" on the other side, and packed it in.

It was too late, though, for one customer who said he had no idea.

"No, he was waving us in, had the sign," the customer said.

The trouble started last month when a bulldozer took down a parking sign and created a curb cut late one night. Now, the men on that lot are charging $20-a-car to park and much more for monthly parking.

But the owner never got the proper license.

"It's totally illegal," said Bob Spear, co-owner of the EZ Park lot next door. "They have no insurance. They drive the cars around in the dark. If you're car gets smashed, who do you turn to? There's no signs."

What's worse, Spear said their guys are threatening his attendants. Fox 29 did not show the attendants' faces because they're afraid of payback.

"He said he was going to split my head open with a baseball bat," one attendant said. "He was up in my face. And you know, we just walked away, we just let it go, and he threatened us because we took photographs of obviously illegal activity that he was doing."

A second E-Z Park attendant said, ""He was extremely angry. He threatened me."

Asked what the man said, the attendant answered, "I thought that he was going to bash my head open. He had a cement blender in his hand and put it in my face."

One of the parking attendants called the cops, and a police report was taken, but the attendant was told essentially that unless it happened again there was nothing they could do about it, Gomez reported.

Last week, city officials gave the owner 30 days to go legit. If she doesn't, she'll have another 10 days before the city even takes action.

"I don't know, I really don't know how they're getting away with it this long," Spear said.

The first parking attendant added, "When you run a legal, legitimate operation, and then you have somebody come in and just break all the rules, push everybody around, threaten everybody, it just makes it very difficult to come to work every day. You know, you're scared. You don't know if you're going to go back home to see your family at the end of the night."

Fox 29 News later got hold of the property owner, Maria Scorsone, who said the guy in the report is her son, Joe. Scorsone also said her daughter handles operations, and she was unaware that the city had cited the property.

There is no fine attached to that citation, by the way.

Parking lot owners are required to fork over 20 percent in taxes to the city, so that's money that parking lot is not paying to the cash-strapped city.

This is not just a problem at that one location. City Councilman Jim Kenney is looking into the issue.

By Kenney's estimate, there are 400 illegal parking lots all across the city that are not paying that 20-percent tax.

Kenney wants to close the loophole that essentially allows them to keep operating until the city shuts them down. He's hoping to introduce that measure next month, Gomez reported.