The owner of a strip mall next door to a Dairy Queen in Illinois is no longer messing around. When people who are visiting the Dairy Queen in Wilmette make the mistake of parking in the lot of a neighboring strip mall, they’re going to end up paying for a very expensive ice cream cone. The owner of the mall has cracked down on parking, and has started booting cars using the lot.

The mall houses a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop, a Starbucks, and a dry cleaner. “How can a little strip mall afford to have a parking patrol for all of the hours that the Dairy Queen is open?” you might ask. Good question, hypothetical person. People whose cars are booted while they’re visiting Dairy Queen have to pay the contractor patrolling the strip mall’s lot to free their vehicles.

“If you want to leave, you have to get the boot off, and to get the boot off they are charging you $130,” the owner of the local Dairy Queen franchise told radio station WBBM.

Local police say that Dairy Queen customers are literally fighting back by throwing rocks through the windows of the strip mall’s stores. Customers complained that they had been parking at the strip mall for years while visiting Dairy Queen, which only has a few of its own parking spaces.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the mall’s owners only put up signs at some point in April, and the vigorous enforcement started on April 30.

After weeks of unhappy Dairy Queen customers and the rock-throwing incident, the businesses sort of came to a compromise: Dairy Queen customers can park in the mall’s lot after 9 P.M, when the business closes at 10.

Dairy Queen owner: Parking boots will be lifted after 9 p.m. [Chicago Tribune]
Wilmette Strip Mall Booting Cars Of People Going To Dairy Queen Next Door [WBBM]

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