The District is closing 23 used-car dealerships and plans to terminate the licenses of 303 salespeople, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said yesterday. The dealerships, he said, were nothing more than glorified storage facilities that had nothing to do with selling cars.
Two weeks ago, the city closed three other lots.
Fenty (D), accompanied by Acting Attorney General Peter J. Nickles and several other city officials, made his announcement outside Citi Motors on Bladensburg Road NE. The mayor pointed to the car lot behind him and said such places offer no benefit to the city.
"The neighborhoods and commercial corridors of the District will no longer be dumping grounds for dangerous vehicles that, according to our findings, were never intended to be sold in the District," Fenty said.
"These are not used-car lots," Nickles added. "These are storage grounds to illegally store vehicles that are being sold elsewhere. These places have no sales activity, no sales records and are storing automobiles illegally."
Every city needs to be able to close or modify "nuisance businesses" like phony used car lots. Where do you draw the line? These businesses occupied space and made money for someone--if they weren't making money, why would there be so many of them in an area like the District? The scam will pick up and move elsewhere, probably into the areas just outside of the District. What one jurisdiction doesn't want, another has to swallow until everyone can agree on what to do. Those of us in that corridor between the District and Baltimore know this all too well.
And don't even get me started on Carmax...
