Dealers defend using garages in rush to shelter cars from hurricane
Ed Napleton on Tuesday defended his company's decision to park its new cars at CityPlace garages in West Palm Beach and also at a garage at Florida State University prior to Hurricane Irma's arrival.
In an exclusive interview, the part-time Ocean Ridge resident said he had pre-arranged with both CityPlace and FSU to pay to park his dealership cars at the properties.
But the social media backlash has been intense, and Napleton said Tuesday he said he never intended to harm the public, who also wanted to park their cars in garages as Hurricane Irma churned toward the state.
"We would never try to hurt our local constituents," Napleton said from his offices in Illinois. "We made arrangements well in advance" of the storm.
Indeed, social media has been in an uproar since late last week, when people went to park in the garages and found brand-new Napleton vehicles taking up choice spots.
On Napleton Hyundai's Facebook page Tuesday, people posted scathing comments, calling the CityPlace parking job "bad business practice" while others said using the garages for vehicle inventory was "abhorrent, immoral and disgusting."
Making matters worse: After CityPlace on Wednesday said the public could park at its garages for $10 a day, Mayor Jeri Muoio on Thursday said that CityPlace and West Palm Beach would open their garages to the public for free starting 5 p.m. Friday.
As it turned out, by 2:30 p.m. Friday all five downtown garages were full and CityPlace's garages were filling fast.
The CityPlace garages have 3,000 spaces. A CityPlace spokeswoman said Napleton took up 350 spaces but Napleton officials said it was 400. Roger Dean Chevrolet also parked at CityPlace garages, taking up another 200 spots.
Roger Dean Chevrolet also caught flak for using the CityPlace's Hibiscus Garage.
But General Manager Jeff Page said his dealership has had advance arrangements with CityPlace's parking lot management company for years and pays per car. The dealership's insurance company pays for it to put the cars there and take them out to protect them from storm damage, Page said.
"It's privately held and that why we paid money to park there," he said. "We paid the door rate to park our cars there."
They didn't rush in to grab spaces when the mayor announced CityPlace parking was open to the public for free — the Roger Dean cars were moved there a day or two ahead of the storm, Page said, conceding the optics "looked horrible" after the mayor's announcement.
"It's great if, of the 3,000 spots, we took 200 spots and Napleton took 400," he said. "There were 2,200 extra spots and the public got to take advantage of that. I'm not calling the parking company and saying I want mine for free, too.
"This is a costly thing for us and I'm happy to do it but I certainly wasn't trying to take something from a public parking garage."
The company's rating in Facebook dropped from four stars to two over three days because angry people put in low grades, he said. "There were 44 pages of threats and people thinking how bad we are. We didn't take anything from anyone. People said Roger Dean could certainly afford to make arrangements and pay for this. Well yes, we did."
The mayor on Tuesday responded to dealers' requests that she clarify that they weren't the bad guys.
"I've seen several posts confusing the City Place garage with a city garage. It is not a city garage," she said in a Facebook post. "The folks at City Place very generously opened up their garage for free parking during the hurricane. They should be thanked. They had agreed to house new cars before we asked them to help us and they still agreed to help. They helped when others didn't."
It's common practice for dealers in hurricane zones to reserve garage space.
The Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts plays host to three dealerships, CEO Judy Mitchell said: Braman BMW, Audi West Palm Beach and LandRover/Jaguar. The five-floor garage, except for the unprotected rooftop, more than fills up with the dealership cars, she said. "It's double-parked. It's totally packed."
The dealerships don't pay for the spaces but all donate to the performing arts center as part of its Corporate Partners Program.
In addition to their cars, the Town of Palm Beach's emergency management group fills most of the spaces under the Kravis' Cohen Pavilion. "We also have a formal arrangement with them," Mitchell said. "They use the Kravis Center facilities as their command post during the storms."
"It's just something we've been doing for many, many years. They were parking cars there during hurricanes Frances and Jeanne and even before that."
Napleton said it was a television weather report early last week that gave him the idea to park some of his inventory in garages, shielded from what seemed to be an unprecedented storm heading straight for the east coast of Florida.
He said he'd never used the CityPlace garages as a shelter for cars in the past, although CityPlace and Napleton Hyundai have a five-year relationship that allows Napleton to showcase its Hyundai vehicles at the mixed-use dining and shopping center on Okeechobee Boulevard.
CityPlace, which opened in 2000, is a public-private venture. Public money backed $55 million in tax-exempt bonds to build its streets, plazas and garages.
A company called One Parking manages the parking garages for CityPlace, and a CityPlace spokeswoman said Napleton negotiated the parking deal with One Parking.
Ed Napleton said he's not sure who did the negotiating but he knows his company paid for the spots. He said he never would have made the garage arrangements if he knew the mayor would seek to use them for the public.
Indeed, the company put out this statement on Wednesday: "We regret that the city of West Palm Beach and CityPlace did not consult with us up front as we surely would have been able to better anticipate the public demand for parking in the lot. What is more regrettable is the inconvenience to the public.
"Rest assured that we would never knowingly park cars in a manner such as to deprive the public of their ability to shelter their vehicles in an emergency," the statement said.
A similar statement was issued for Napleton Infiniti of Tallahassee, which parked 80 cars at FSU.
Napleton said the FSU official who gave the company permission to park there "had no actual authority to speak on FSU's behalf," unbeknownst to the company, the statement said.
Napleton said about his cars were parked at a garage next to FSU's basketball arena. The spaces suddenly became in hot demand when the arena became a public shelter as the storm moved closer to the state's capital.
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