San Luis, Riedel clash over parking lot sales

SAN LUIS, Ariz. — Nieves Riedel said she's just trying to help individuals and organizations by allowing them to use the parking lot of her shopping center in San Luis as an place for outdoor sales.

Neither she nor her Plaza Riedel shopping center are profiting from the sales, she says, but San Luis officials say Riedel effectively is allowing a swap meet to operate on the premises without a required business license from the city.

Riedel says she and her attorney have reviewed city codes and believe no such license in required.

The parking lot sales have created yet another zoning dispute between Riedel, a longtime San Luis businesswoman, and zoning officials. Previously over the past year, she clashed with the city over the height of a fence surrounding a soccer field being developed on her property next to Plaza Riedel, and over an expansion of the Harvest Preparatory Academy charter school, also on Riedel land situated next to the shopping center.

In January, Riedel began making available part of the parking lot to individuals and nonprofit groups as a place to sell clothing, baked goods and used items on Fridays and Saturdays as fund-raisers.

Among those who have taken advantage of her offer of the parking lot, she said, have been a San Luis youth dance group, the newly crowned Miss San Luis Mayra Jauregui and Arizona Western College students.

Riedel hasn't charged the vendors for use of the parking lot, she said, because she intends the gesture as a way to help financially strapped families or nonprofit organizations raise some extra cash.

“This is not a garage sale,” she said. “It's not a swap meet. I don't get any money from it. This began as a way to help a family needing money. We don't see how city codes apply to us.”

Not so, say city officials, who have told Riedel to get a license or shut down the operation.

“What the people are doing are patio sales,” city spokeswoman Karin Meza said, “and that's considered a swap meet, and for that a license is required.”

Riedel, a former San Luis mayor who is seeking a council seat in next month's primary election, charged that the city is trying to block commercial ventures in the shopping center located on Juan Sanchez Boulevard.

“I don't see what the problem is,” she said. “I'm not charging” for use of the parking lot for vendor booths. “There's plenty of space left over for parking. There's no health risk, and whatever risk there is would be covered by my insurance, because it is private property.”