Easement and Parking Issues

For the past year the Board of Directors of ROIA has received complaints about cars from the Country Ridge apartments parking on River Oaks streets. The apartment residents park their cars overnight here and use the easement sidewalk that extends from the subdivision south into the apartment parking lots to go to and from their cars.

The Board contacted the City of Warrenville several times over the past five months for guidance on the situation. The sidewalk is built on City of Warrenville right-of-way which is designated as an emergency entrance to River Oaks for emergency vehicles if the intersection of Rt. 59 and Ridge Drive were impassable.

Several possibilities have been suggested by our homeowners to discourage apartment parkers from using River Oaks roads. One suggestion involves a barrier gate with a Knox box to allow emergency entrance by the Fire and Police if needed. Another suggestion involves limiting on-street parking for all cars in River Oaks. Another has been to encourage the City to make sure that all parking spaces are available in the apartments’ parking lots so that there isn’t a need for them to park on other streets.

The City has explained that since River Oaks and Ridge are public roads, anyone has the right to park here as long as they obey the parking laws. Community Development has said that signs that say "Residents Parking Only" would be probably be illegal whether they are put on private property or City easement. Chief Turano, the Chief of Police for the Warrenville Police Department, replied in an email to our questions: "The issue centers around the fact that the streets in River Oaks subdivision are public streets and there is no prohibition in the Warrenville City Code for overnight parking. Because of this, the vehicle you mentioned is not abandoned or parked in the same spot in excess of 7 days. Because the streets are public, there is no restriction on who parks there. The only solution I can think of is for the River Oaks HOA to perhaps have of meeting with the residents and see if enacting an ordinance to prohibit overnight street parking between 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM. However, this would also apply to residents of River Oaks, so I am not sure how this would be received by the residents."

We asked for further guidance from the City of Warrenville regarding what might be done to address this situation, including dealing with the parking availability for residents of the apartments on Country Ridge, and have recently received a reply from the City of Warrenville’s Director of Community and Economic Development. This response includes the review of a possible barrier gate that was discussed by the Plan Commission in 2014. This issue was brought before the City in 2014 by one of the owners of the apartment buildings who wanted to stop access by River Oaks residents onto the Country Ridge apartment property.

Please read the City Director’s response HERE.

The Plan Commission 2014 response to the barrier gate request is available HERE.

The Plan Commission 2014 hearing about this request is available HERE.

The City’s Community Development Director points out that since the barrier gate was denied in 2014, it is unlikely that a request to install such a gate now would be approved.

Please plan to attend the Annual Meeting at the Warrenville Public Library at 7 PM on February 20th to discuss this issue.