By JOSEPH KELLARD
Eventually, others came to her assistance. The scene was the lot of the vacant Foodtown supermarket on Long Beach Road in Oceanside, where people had parked to attend the annual crafts fair at the adjacent Schoolhouse Green. They have done so for years, with no problems. Not anymore.
Four trucks from the Island Park-based All County Hook Up & Towing arrived at about 4 p.m. on June 25 to tow away the cars of fair-goers and merchants parked on the privately owned property.
Bob Towers, former president of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce, the organization that holds the fair, said there were about 20 cars left in the lot when he and others heard about the tow trucks, and that one truck had already taken a car away and the other three had cars hooked up.
When police arrived, they explained to the car owners that they cannot park in a private lot. Moreover, two signs are posted on the property, explaining the law. The sign in the lot on the Long Beach Road side says, "No parking at any time," while the other, posted on a light post in the middle of the lot, says: "No overnight parking. No commercial or for sale vehicles. All others will be towed at owner's expense."
Towers complained about the relatively small size, number and wording of these signs, and that there is no sign posted at a second entrance to the lot, on Castleton Court. "The signs are a little ambiguous, and I would think a parking lot of that size would have more than just those two small signs," he said.
"Yes, it is wrong to park someplace that is private property," said past chamber President Maria Heller. "But given the fact it was empty for the past five years, and that no one really seems to know who the owner is, and there were never any signs up before, you would think that the signs they would put up now would be more visible."
"This is the first year we have the contract [at that lot]," said a man who declined to give his name but identified himself as the manager of All-County. The owner of the parking lot could not be reached.
The manager confirmed reports that when police got involved in the incident and talked with his drivers, All-County agreed to drop their rates for the hookups and tows. "We gave them all a discount price," the manager said. "We charged them half or even less than half."
Towers said that the Chamber of Commerce spent about $400 out of its own pocket to pay all the towing expenses incurred by the fair's merchants and patrons, one of whom was parked in the lot to attend a movie at Oceanside Theater, next to the abandoned supermarket. The crafts fair is the chamber's only fund-raiser, and the proceeds are put into scholarship funds for students at Oceanside High School.
"I think the decent thing for the towing company to do was to come over to the fair and tell us they were going to tow," Heller said. "They should have said, 'This is private property, you have 15 minutes to get your cars out of the parking lot.' But they went in and said 'my boss told me to tow everything away.' ... So I think it was very wrong for them to do this."
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