Dear Editor:
The shortage of parking around Provo and especially the Riviera apartments is a story as old as the Bible. I was angry to see the article in Tuesday’s paper titled “Apartment complex rejects tenant cars,” which wrongly portrayed the Riviera management as a victim of circumstance that did all it could to warn its tenants.
I have lived in the Riviera for two and a half years, and since I moved in there has been a problem with parking. In fact, I have never had a parking sticker unless I have fussed and called off-campus housing, which has more clout than a simple undergrad. Yet for the past two and a half years, Glenwood Properties and the people that get all the rent money from starving students, like myself, ignore this and run around with their heads cut off come Fall Semester saying they are working on the problem and that they informed us of the parking problem already. They like to give us lame excuses like Riviera was built when there was plenty of parking and they are helpless to do anything to improve upon that. (If I’m correct, that was during the era when the young Donny and Marie Osmond were strumming their guitars and were the only ones rich enough to own a car.)
It would take a miracle akin to parting the Red Sea to ever hope Glenwood Properties would take some of my rent money and find a permanent solution to the parking problem.
Speaking of permanent, Glenwood Properties has already done something rather permanent with the parking lot. They have permanently increased their chance of getting more rent money, while simultaneously decreasing my chances of getting a parking space. In response to a petition signed by students, they built a sand volleyball court in the middle of our parking lot where there used to be more parking spaces. Hmm, I’m just wondering who they were thinking of benefiting here. My, how the sound of jingling money in their coffers is an image that always comes to mind.
Now Glenwood Properties might not be the monster I have made them out to be. They do the normal things: They mow the lawn, they fix the leaks and occasionally throw parties for their smiling tenants. They say they have warned us of the parking. Ha! I and my fellow Rivieraites knew long in advance and did all we could to escape the oppression of the dreaded car booting. We called the office way back in January to add our name to a list of tenants, which was supposed to ensure us a parking sticker. We called in the spring and tried to buy stickers, but we were told our name was on the list and not to worry. Then before we went on vacation we called the office again and they lulled us into parking lot security and we left assured all was well in Zion. Little did we know what was about to be unleashed upon us.
Swarms of cars whose owners had just moved in for fall descended upon the parking lot, taking all of the spaces supposedly reserved for people who lived there before. When my friends and I ran irately to the office they told us parking was on a first come basis and we could just park our cars elsewhere. “You knew there was limited space,” they said. “We warned you before”.
I guess Glenwood Properties believes in the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rule.
Holly R. Hansen
Las Vegas
