Last year, about 25 dealers gathered at a Beltsville lot to discuss strategy and chipped in a few hundred dollars each to hire a real estate lawyer, Daniel A. Laplaca. He told them that he would lobby County Council members on their behalf and, if they could not get the law amended, they might have grounds to sue Prince George's.
"The law may be considered a taking by the county that would be compensable," Laplaca said he told the dealers. "Essentially it's saying that every used-car dealership that is located on fewer than 25,000 square feet is so bad for this county that it should not exist, and I don't think that is a defensible position."
Tony Sia's Y2K Auto Sales in Prince George's County, at 23,000 square feet, is too small to remain in business under zoning that is about to take effect.
(Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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Other communities around the country have tried to clean up areas that are clogged with car lots, but rarely through retroactive zoning. Such a method is more often used to remove sex shops. Prince George's officials argue that three years was enough time for the car dealers to restructure their businesses, by buying or leasing additional property, or by building another kind of business that fits within the amended law.
This week, at the request of the Prince George's Chamber of Commerce, County Councilman Douglas J.J. Peters (D-Bowie), former chairman of the chamber, proposed that the deadline for closing the used-car dealerships be extended to Dec. 1.
"I think before we shut these guys down based on previous legislation we should at least go out and look at them to see what we're talking about," said Peters, who was not in office when the measure was adopted. "A lot of these are small, family owned and minority businesses, and we need to be sensitive to what is happening. That's all I'm saying."
No car dealers or business representatives attended the hearing Wednesday on Peters's proposal for an extension, and it was voted down unanimously by the council's planning and zoning committee. "It's really time for them to move on," said David Harrington (D-Bladensburg), chairman of the committee.
The full council will vote on Peters' bill Tuesday, at its last meeting before the summer recess. If it does not pass, owners of car lots in violation of the new rules will be issued a notice of violation, taken to court and forced to close, officials said.
Some have closed already.
Bill Westerlund shut down his Beltsville Auto Exchange, the site of the dealers' planning meeting last year. George Basle, owner and operator of Ray's Used Cars in Beltsville for 16 years, sold his lot two weeks ago and is moving to Ocean City. "A little guy like me can't afford to pay rent on 25,000 square feet," he said.
At Y2K Auto Sales, Tony Sia said ridding the highway of car lots will hurt not only the businessmen but also their customers. "Where would these guys go?" Sia said. "People we finance here have basically gotten rejected everywhere. We'll take a risk and give them the benefit of the doubt."
A case in point, he said, is Ashley C. Smith, 19, who bought a teal Honda Civic from him in February for $5,500. Sia financed Smith's car despite her lack of credit history, trusting that her part-time job at a local nonprofit organization would enable her to make the $280 monthly payments on the 1995 two-door. Smith has four payments remaining.
"I went to another car dealership and [they] told me: 'You're a first-time buyer and you don't have credit. Get off my lot," Smith said. Sia, she said, "was the only one who worked with me."
