Bayside Chrysler Dealership Is Neighborhood Nightmare, Locals Say

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- On an average day, Samantha Sykula reckons she walks past three blocks packed with dealership cars just to get to her Bayside home - not an easy task considering she's nine months pregnant.

But it's one Sykula and her husband have begrudgingly grown accustomed to over the last year or so, when she said they first started noticing the Bayside Chrysler Jeep Dodge dealership a few blocks away had been clogging their neighborhood with customers' vehicles.

What started as a minor annoyance soon escalated to a constant neighborhood nuisance as she said garage staff held spots on the neighborhood streets to illegally fill with cars and set off car alarms which blared for minutes while they tried to locate vehicles, Sykula told Patch.

In one instance, Sykula said she witnessed a driver yell a homophobic slur at a neighbor who confronted him about the illegal parking.

The dealership at 212-19 Northern Boulevard has racked up a whopping 62 complaints to 311 since 2010, according to NYC Open Data. Of those, 17 were for illegally parking cars on sidewalks and surrounding neighborhood streets.

"Neighbors complain all the time because nothing is changing," Sykula said. "Our next-door neighbors, our upstairs neighbors – everyone says they complain just as much as we do."

Sykula has tried calling the dealership but said she was either ignored or given empty promises. She's tried complaining to 311, but said the dealership just covers its tracks when inspected. She's even tried calling NYPD's 111th precinct and was told an officer would pay the dealership a visit.

Still, she said, the neighborhood nightmare persists.

"It's so anger inducing and stress-inducing," Sykula said. "I’m due next week, I have two kids and there have been many times that I’m walking four blocks to my house in the snow because they're parked up the street."

As recently as Wednesday, Sykula said she passed seven dealership cars parked along her street while walking home from her car, and she's sure they belong to the Chrysler dealership. The cars typically bare service tickets in their windows and have license plate covers that read "Chrysler Jeep Dodge," she said.

And the service drivers who park them make no attempt to hide it, Sykula said.

"We would see the guys wearing Chrysler jackets walking around with walkie talkies and papers for which cars need to be where," she said.

Sykula said she and her husband at first didn't complain about the dealership's parking because it started out as a small annoyance, but things quickly got worse. More and more service cars began to clog neighborhood parking and drivers started to sound their alarms while trying to find them, she said.

"They would set them off for 10 minutes at a time while walking from the dealership until they found them," she said.

That was the last straw. Sykula began calling the dealership to complain, but said she was blown off every time she asked to speak to a manager.

"I was pretty pissed off," she said.

That lasted for about a month until the issue boiled over while Sykula was walking home with her two children and saw a neighbor waiting for a street parking spot being held by one of the dealership's cars. The dealership had taken to holding street parking spots in the neighborhood by immediately filling the spots with new cars every time they took a car out, she said.

When the neighbor confronted a service driver about it, the two got into a screaming match in front of Sykula and her kids.

"The service guy gets out of the car and starts screaming at him that he's an idiot and he’s not getting the spot," she recalled. "Then he calls him a f----t and tells him to go f--- himself."

Sykula said after that, both she and her husband called the cops and the dealership, where she finally got through to a profusely apologetic manager. He assured her the dealership was securing a parking lot that would be ready in the next month. It sounded sincere, but Sykula wasn't ready to let him off the hook just yet.

"It's empty words when you're doing what you say you'd hate and up until now have ignored me," she said.

Efforts made by Patch to contact the dealership's manager were not immediately successful.

Their exchange was six months ago, and sure enough the cars never left, Sykula said.

Frustrated at the dealership's gaslighting, Sykula and her husband, Rich, took to social media with their grievances. Prompted by a blue Jeep Liberty's alarm that blared "for minutes on end," Rich Sykula posted a video over three minutes long to a Bayside Facebook group page of the dealership cars parked in his neighborhood.

The post garnered a slew of responses from commenters who slammed the dealership as a neighborhood and consumer nightmare. Some were locals who expressed similar parking concerns, and another handful were from former customers blasting the dealership's customer service.

Some suggested gathering at a Precinct 111 community council meeting – held the first Tuesday of every month – to "make this their problem as well" and demand something be done.

But until then, Sykula has little hope left that things will change. She said she was told the dealership passed its latest complaint-inspired inspection by the Department of Consumer Affairs on Jan. 19. The department did not immediately return requests for comment.

Sykula said the cars were back in no time.

"Right after I got the notice that they got no violation, there were four Jeeps parked in a row in front of my house," she said.

Representatives from Chrysler did not immediately return requests for comment.

Lead photo via Google Maps.

Lead video via Samantha Sykula.