City bullies Walmart into banning truck parking with $50K in fines

An Illinois Walmart location is finally giving in to city officials and eliminating semi truck parking after they were hit with tens of thousands of dollars worth of fines.

For nearly two years, city officials in Springfield, Illinois, have been pressuring a Walmart store located at 1100 Lejune Drive to act to stop trucks from parking in their lot. After months of pressure from city officials along with heavy fines, the Walmart location has surrendered to the city’s arm-twisting and is now taking substantial steps to prevent trucks from parking in their lot, including installing three height restricting bars at entrances to the lot along with concrete barriers.

City, south side Walmart close to resolution on improper truck parking https://t.co/5ZagX6N3rl

— StateJournalRegister (@SJRbreaking) March 21, 2019

“We have been working with the city toward a solution, and those barriers that you see put up recently are part of that solution,” a Walmart spokesperson told the State Journal-Register.

The truck parking spat began in April of 2017 when a zoning inspector noticed semi trucks parked in spaces marked for cars and after further digging found that the Walmart location had not followed the parking plan that they had originally submitted to city officials. The Walmart store was issued an ordinance violation by city officials. City officials argued that trucks parking in the lot reduced visibility and posed a safety risk for drivers.

In November 2017, city officials found that Walmart had not acted to keep trucks from parking in their lot and issues a second ordinance violation. Eventually city officials elected to retroactively impose a $500 per day fine to the Walmart store, capping the total fine at $50,000.

City attorney Jim Zerkle says that the Walmart location had the option to re-stripe the parking lot to allow for some truck parking but that they have opted to ban truck parking altogether. “Ultimately, Walmart decided not to change the parking lot to allow for truck parking. So what you have there is their design to prevent the illegal parking of trucks,” he explained.

Trucks will still be able to enter the lot at a location near the store’s garden center, but they are only allowed in to load and unload.

Now that Walmart has capitulated to the demands of Springfield city officials, they say that in addition to the height and concrete barriers they have recently installed, they’ll be patrolling the lot and calling police if they catch a truck parking there.