Alley Wars: Main Street Businesses Spar Over Back-Street Access

A handful of neighboring business owners in Catonsville are squabbling over the use of the alleys behind their buildings, which has impacted traffic and parking in downtown Catonsville.

Side streets are what many people use to avoid traffic or to access the parking lots of businesses that face Frederick Road.

But sometimes conflicts can arise between neighboring business owners over the use of those alleys, which can in turn impact customers and traffic along Frederick Road.

If you've parked in the side lot at Atwater's on Frederick Road in the last year, you've noticed the small driveway that goes out of the parking lot into the Strawberry Fields parking lot. Drivers may use that driveway to exit either or onto Newburg Avenue. Exiting that way can often be safer than turning left or right out of the narrow parking lot on Frederick Road.

But over the last several months, Craig Witzke, the owner of the Strawberry Fields property and parking lot, has had trouble with tractor trailers and other large trucks cutting through the alley. He installed wooden posts on the side of the narrow driveway to prevent this from happening a few weeks ago.

Witzke told Patch that the large trucks were causing damage to his parking lot. He wasn't sure where the trucks were coming from or going to.

Ned Atwater, the owner of Atwater's, said the store gets several deliveries over the course of a week, but none of them are from tractor trailers. Now that the barriers are there, any trucks that are coming to Atwater's will have to access the side of the building on Frederick Road, Atwater said. This can impact traffic and pedestrian safety on Frederick Road.

Kirby Spencer, the owner of the building Atwater's is in, said the fact that the driveway is there as a right of way onto her property is something that has concerned her. Witzke never contacted her about installing the posts or the driveway, she said.

What she would like to see instead is for the driveway to be one-way leading out of the Atwater's parking lot onto the Strawberry Fields property.

Across Frederick Road behind , Gary Hemphill found himself in a similar situation when access from his small lot was closed off by the owners of .

For more than 30 years, Hemphill's lot, which is in between Winters Lane and Egges Lane, was accessed through the parking lot that Ships owners Jim and Sharon Andrews purchased.

But then late last year, barriers were constructed on the edge of the lot, preventing tenants who park there from accessing Winters Lane.

Hemphill said he was never notified that his right of way would be blocked. As a result, renovations had to be made to the other side of the lot to allow access to Egges Lane.

At a recent Catonsville sponsored by We Love Catonsville, architect Tom McGilloway talked about how what's behind businesses was just as important as what was visible from the main street.

McGilloway, who has worked with a lot of local governments across the country and Main Street renewal, said that if parking is available behind a businesss, it needs to be well-lit and have good signage.

"People will use parking lots and resources (that might be a bit out of the way) more if they have a positive experience (aesthetics and perception of safety) walking from that parking resource to the stores and vice versa," he wrote in an email after the event.

Patch wants to know, do you utilize alleys and back parking lots as a way to get around downtown Catonsville? Do you feel it is safe or disruptive to neighboring businesses?