July 02--One of the joys of a sweltering North Shore summer evening is a pilgrimage to the Dairy Queen. One of our favorites is a no-frills DQ on Lake Avenue in Wilmette.
This is an Old School DQ, built in 1957. No seating. A cramped vestibule and counter. A banging screen door, and on sultry summer nights, lines of customers -- boisterous softball teams, bedraggled parents trailing children, squadrons of teens -- snaking out both doors.
Which is great for owner Bill Ridge's business, except for one thing: parking. There isn't much.
This DQ doesn't sit on a vast expanse of suburban real estate; more like a cubicle of asphalt. For years, customers approaching the DQ have pulled into the parking lot next door, where there's a Starbucks emporium, plus a Jimmy John's sandwich shop and other businesses. The DQ customers didn't pay much heed to parking lot signs warning that interlopers could be towed because, in general, they weren't.
This spring, however, the owners of that next-door lot cracked down on the DQ intruders. Even those customers who briefly alighted could find themselves booted after a few minutes, even a few seconds. That added $130 to the cost of that chocolate-chip banana Blizzard.
"Two minutes after I left my car, they booted me," Glenview resident Heidi Rosenberg told a Pioneer Press reporter. "It left a bad taste in my mouth. ... It's an ugly way to handle the problem."
Shades of folk singer Steve Goodman's famous "Lincoln Park Pirates."
Recently, the ugliness apparently snowballed into a full-scale meltdown: Wilmette police reported that someone threw rocks through the windows of two businesses fronting that parking lot. One business received a letter threatening escalating retaliation if "illegal booting keeps going on ..."
We pause here for a disclosure: We know Ridge and are longtime customers of his DQ. We have on occasion availed ourselves (momentarily!) of the next door parking lot when the DQ lot is filled.
That said, as devotees of free markets and the rights of property owners, we sympathize with MJK Real Estate and its defense of parking spaces for its tenants and their customers. The property manager, who declined to be identified, tells us that he has been "hindered" in leasing out the building because of scarce parking. "It's just a very difficult situation."
In recent weeks, a glimmer of good news: MJK has agreed to end booting after 9 p.m., giving DQ customers a free hour or so before the DQ closes. That's a good start on what we hope becomes a full-blown truce.
We'd like to encourage both sides to seek a gentler solution.
Would DQ customers be willing to fork over a nominal fee for a brief parking lot visit? We would.
Could the DQ offer some sort of blandishment -- free banana splits? -- to customers or tenants next door as a quid pro quo for allowing DQ customers a few minutes to linger over cones?
Could there simply be a short grace period (longer than five seconds) while customers get their DQ fix, with clear signs warning that DQ customers can't dawdle in the lot?
Ridge says his family has owned this DQ since 1966 and "we've never seen anything" like this parking lot tempest. He says some customers have vowed not to return because of the booting threat.
Life without DQ? Unthinkable.
We can only imagine one benefit from this parking lot war. Knowing that the boot looms should help customers decide faster -- chocolate or vanilla? Dilly or Buster bar? That should keep those long lines moving.
