Kendall County Times

Residents of Cora Street in Joliet have had enough of the parking situations and traffic caused by a new store on the corner.

Four of the residents attended the February 21 City Council meeting to make their voices heard because they felt the city has not done anything about the problem.

The residents were upset with the increased traffic flow from the Carnitas Don Jose y Supermercado located on Ruby Street at the end of the block. The store has been around for four years now, and a ban on non-residential parking on Cora street has been proposed, which would leave the store scrambling for alternative parking for their customers. 

Residents were upset with all the additional businesses being put in the area without any parking attached, which takes away from their parking in front of their homes on Cora Street. There is only parking allowed on one side of Cora street, but residents at the meeting say that during the busier hours of the store, cars will line both sides of their street, making it impossible to drive up and down from their homes or find parking when they return home. They also complained that police were not ticketing enough in the area to dissuade customers from illegal parking.

The council and city staff discussed this issue, with city manager James Capparelli explaining that the owner was trying to purchase another property somewhere to create more parking for customers.

"So we were going to be in negotiations with him," Caparelli said. "So we'll try to work this out to get additional parking." 

The police department was already stretched so thin that it is struggling to respond to any of the parking complaints in the area, Caparelli said.

The council had a resolution to ban non-residential parking on the agenda for this meeting but took it off to give the store more time to find alternatives amidst the brewing conflict. They will address this issue again at a later meeting based on if additional parking is created.