I'm living the American dream and the city does not like it.
Jeremy Sark founded his auto repair shop, Sark's
Automotive, almost a decade ago.
For the better part of that decade, his partner Marie
Dougherty has managed the day-to-day office operations, but
Jeremy and Marie have a problem.
Their side business, renting U-Hauls, will be illegal soon.
We were informed in December by email from our landlord, that
there was gonna be changes and that U-Haul rentals had to cease.
But why?
The city council and mayor dream of transforming Maldens downtown.
A developer told them that U-Hauls were ugly.
The city made major zoning changes to attract development and exempted
every other existing business, except one moving truck rentals.
You've done nothing about it.
Got all these cars parked out there.
Uh, look there's a convenient store with U-Hauls parked on
the side of North Main Street.
You got 40 to 50,000 cars passing here every day
and that's what they see?
So we say, well, we need to clean that up.
They're not the prettiest thing, but yet when the mayor or somebody needs
a U-Haul, guess what, they call us.
For Jeremy and Marie, renting U-hauls, isn't just an important
part of the shop's revenue.
They service the trucks and it's a crucial way that automotive
repair customers find them.
But not only do we rent U-Hauls we also work on U-Hauls.
So we're not going to lose just the rental part of the
business, we're also going to lose working on the repair part.
They see Sark's Automotive to get the car worked on, but if
they don't come here to drop it off, they'll never know about us.
Mr.
Bishop is one of our regular customers as well.
Met him because he had broke down actually in a U-Haul.
We have his cars, his wife's cars, his daughter's, his
son's, his entire family brings their vehicles here to us.
The idea behind giving Sark's Automotive until the end of the year
to keep renting U-Hauls, is that it'll be able to recoup the cost of
losing the business by that time.
It's an unconstitutional zoning concept know as amortization.
But the rental business has grown over the years and Jeremy
and Marie have every reason to think it will continue growing.
Every year our U-Haul money continues to grow
because we continue to get more business from it.
So just in 2013, possibly $10,000 in sales from
U-Haul and now it's $52,000.
The three top places in the United States to move right
now is South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
So no matter how much time they give us, it's never gonna
compensate the money because the money is constantly growing.
If they do lose their rental business, Jeremy and Marie
may have to lay off one or two employees to balance the books.
It pains Jeremy and Marie to think that someone might lose their job.
You're not in business just for yourself.
You also know that you have 17 employees, 13 families that you need
to make sure are fed, that roofs are over their heads, food is in their
bellies, clothes are on their backs.
It's going to be a life changing event for somebody.
But Jeremy and Marie are fighting back, filing a lawsuit with
the Institute for justice to protect their property rights.
Nobody should lose their job just because someone
thinks U-Hauls are ugly.
Cities shouldn't be able to destroy a safe pre-existing business,
just because a private developer doesn't like how it looks.
We're standing up for Jeremy and Marie, because if they lose,
no small business is safe from being destroyed by rezoning.