Potomac Mills Issues and possible action

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Originally posted by aesthetic

If you want to see some action, please sign the petition.

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http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/MillsSlugSpaces/

Wayne, I hope that you get the luxury of your retail establishment closing its stores and relocating you just to Springfield so that you can sit in the lovely traffic for about 1-3 hours of your day. Why even bother to post when you do not even blink to get to your destination in the morning. We are all very grateful for the lovely spaces that were provided to us by PM managment but we all know who run PM now which is the SIMON group. Trust me they do not have an excellent track record of keeping their malls prestine. See how PM turns to s*** if no commuters come into the mall. Commuter do not get up in the morning to stand in line during heat,cold wind, and rain for nothing. We are just asking for some consideration instead of greed.

By the way: The only that took up your spots yesterday afternoon were a few charter bus parked diagonally. So the mall management enforcing parking for what when you have over 5000 spaces [^]

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Originally posted by 757slugger

Good afternoon toomuchcoffee lady, I have read your posts and you are right. I can see why no one would want to get in your car in the morning.

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Up yours.

work in Chinatown, live on Rte 3. Looking for 17 to L'Enfant ride.

There are two vacant buildings (one restaurant and one storefront) in the outer circle surrounding PM that are obviously not in need of their parking spaces because the businesses are gone. Does anyone know what the PWC police code is for parking in vacant lots? As long as the car is moved and not parked overnight, I don't see how they could justify towing or ticketing it. Then again, you take your life in your own hands walking back to the bus and slug lines. It's too busy with no crosswalks.

For everyone's information, I received this response from Frank Puleo who I assume works for Corey Stewart, Chairman At Large:

Thank you for emailing Chairman Stewart about the Potomac mills commuter lots. I wanted to give you some information, which we have received from Supervisor May's office. Below is the information.

Thank you for your e-mail and I hope I can explain the situation a
little. When Potomac Mills was being built the county proffered/requested that they provide a section of their parking lot to accommodate carpooling, park and ride, etc... The agreed upon number of spaces was determined to be 275. That was the agreement that was settled on before most of the current board members, but not all were elected. It never was much of issue until here recently with the gas prices as they are. What happened is that the mall started experiencing a huge increase in participation and it became an issue with their tenants complaining about lack of parking for the businesses that were close to the designated commuter area. For the last several years the number of commuters using the lot seemed to be around 700-900 cars per day, which the mall did not have an issue with as the area was underdeveloped. Now that Costco is there and the mall has some expansion plans they have counted as many as 1200+ cars there on a daily basis. They have been allowing many more cars to park there than what was required of them and they are still allowing 900 cars per day when they have no obligation to provide any more than the agreed upon 275 number. We would push them on the request for additional spots if there were no other options to the
commuters, but there are several options available. The lot at Horner Rd is full on most days correct, but the Tackett's Mill lot is no more that 50-60 percent full and there are a substantial amount of spots available at the 123 commuter lot too. I know this may not be the best option for you or the way it was but we all have to work through this unbelievable tough economic time and make a pledge to continue to investigate alternatives to oil dependency.

If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us again.

Frank

Frank Puleo
Office of the Chairman
1 County Complex
Prince William, VA 22192
(office) 703-792-4640

And here is my reply to him and Supervisor May:

Well, taking into consideration that Potomac Mills was built 23 years ago and also taking into consideration the ridiculous over-population and continuous residential building to make the counties, cities, etc. more money, then we need to be accomodated in any way possible. I grew up here. Potomac Mills had been my hang out since 5th grade. Believe me, I know the difference between the population and the way things were then as opposed to now. There are way to many people here. The ridiculous amount of traffic waiting for us around every turn proves it. So, in the people's eyes, no one can justify the agreed upon mere 250 spaces of 1985 in the year 2008!

Still, the fact of the matter remains... the Potomac Mills parking lot is mostly empty during the work day, and commuter's should be allowed to park there. We are indeed boycotting and are spending our money elsewhere. As word gets around about this situation and doing something about it, Potomac Mills will lose many more potential customers and essentilly give their business away. They already are.

We pay taxes to the county, and we need to be taken care of. I know everything is about money, but the county better start being more for the people and stop being so worried about appeasing the businesses. We count. Remember that.