As you head up each floor, the amount of mess in the parking garage stairways tends to increase. The type ranges from random litter to unknown substances on the windows.
One of two entrances to the St. Albans City parking garage.
Multiple vehicles at the parking garage, including this sports car covered by a reflective tarp, seem to have been parked at the garage for several months.
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One of two entrances to the St. Albans City parking garage.
ST. ALBANS CITY — Broken glass. Dead pigeons. Cigarette butts and sitting vehicles.
Ward 1 Alderperson Timothy Hawkins wants them out of the St. Albans parking garage.
“It’s just becoming a big mess,” Hawkins said Monday night during the city council’s Sept. 12 meeting. “If we wanted to run a S-*-*-T-hole, we could have done it in another way than putting a parking garage there.”
After wrapping up the council’s agenda for the night, Hawkins addressed the issue as part of his councilor’s report. He said he visited the parking garage after midnight on Sunday to check out firsthand what happens there after the sun goes down, and he encountered people using the parking garage as a space to stay.
He also found plenty of cigarette butts and litter. While few parking garages are spotless, the St. Albans parking garage sometimes has messes in its stairwells and people sitting on the steps. Head a few floors higher, and the garage features a few unmoving vehicles and, sometimes, transients.
Multiple vehicles at the parking garage, including this sports car covered by a reflective tarp, seem to have been parked at the garage for several months.
“That’s not what it’s all about. That’s not what we put the money in the garage for. I don’t see why my vehicle couldn’t have been a police cruiser going up on [the top] floor,” Hawkins said.
Construction of the St. Albans parking garage was approved by city voters back in 2013 with 559 voting for the project and 170 voting against. The cost was $13 million.
City Manager Dominic Cloud said the city administration is aware of how the parking garage is being used, and he said he can ask the St. Albans Police Department to step up patrols.
Cloud and Public Works Director Marty Manahan also explained what the city has done to try to cut down on trouble spots, and Manahan identified some roadblocks that limit the administration’s effectiveness.
Part of the problem, according to Manahan, has been with the state's attorney's offices, which push criminal cases forward after evidence is presented. He named two prior instances when his department handed potential criminal evidence to the city’s police department, which passed it on to the Franklin County State’s Attorney’s Office, but no charges were filed as a result.
One case involved a group of minors who allegedly pulled the fire alarm, which Hawkins personally witnessed. The second case involved an individual who allegedly drove his vehicle through the parking garage gates.
“The person who is running for election this year [John Lavoie] dismissed the case because he told me that [the driver] wasn't trying to be destructive. He was just trying to get out of the parking garage,” Manahan said.
Lavoie recalled the conversation, and he said that the state’s attorney’s office didn’t bring the case forward because state law requires proof of intent in order to pursue an unlawful mischief criminal charge.
“I think there’s always been some difficulty in prosecuting what we might call low level misdemeanor crime. That was true before the backlog that was created during the pandemic,” Lavoie said. “We’ve always been a system with limited resources.”
Each case is considered individually, Lavoie said, and it’s difficult to say exactly when a case crosses a threshold that requires spending those limited resources. If someone is a repeat offender of low-level misdemeanors, however, his office is more likely to deal with the issue.
There’s also no designation stopping his office from pursuing criminal charges that happen at the parking garage, Lavoie said, nor does he think that there’s anything unique about the city’s garage.
Two candidates are running for Franklin County State’s Attorney this fall after long-time state’s attorney Jim Hughes announced his retirement. He spent 36 years in the office.
Lavoie, former deputy state’s attorney, is running as the Democratic nominee. He took over the office this past week after Hughes officially stepped down.
Zach Weight, a private criminal defense attorney, is running as a Republican.
Outside of potential criminality at the parking garage, Hawkins’ concerns also extended to the cleanliness of the structure, especially its staircases.
As you head up each floor, the amount of mess in the parking garage stairways tends to increase. The type ranges from random litter to unknown substances on the windows.
Manahan said that city workers use a water wagon device daily to clean out the stairwells by spraying them down, but people are often inside, which can make the process a challenge to complete. Windows and garage decks get hosed down twice a year.
Hawkins also expressed frustration with vehicles that have not moved in months. On the third floor, what looks like a Corvette is covered with a large tarp, and on the top floor, a maroon van – topped with a whirligig – houses a motorcycle.
Manahan explained that some visiting nurses and visiting doctors have used the parking garage to store their vehicles because they walk to Northwestern Medical Center, and while the vehicles may seem abandoned, they just get used intermittently.
The van on the top floor, which has flat tires, belongs to a disabled person. Under state law, the city is required to provide free parking to people with particular disabilities, and since the vehicle is licensed and inspected, there’s little the city can do.
Hawkins, however, continued to push for change.
“The garage is not functioning in the capacity that we wanted it,” Hawkins said. “Therefore, it’s now functioning as a shelter for homeless people, a skateboard park for kids, places for drug addicts and drug deals, and a place to put your car and forget about it and not have to worry about it.”
To solve the issues, Hawkins asked the city to put together a game plan, similar to an earlier initiative undertaken by the city to cut down on similar problems in Taylor Park.
Cloud expressed some concerns with being too heavy-handed on the issue, but he agreed that more steps could be taken.
“The challenge is what’s gone on in the country in the last five years has made it really hard to take a tougher stance on managing public assets, right?” Cloud said. “And so, you know, rather than the homeless in the parking garage, we could very easily get a complaint about: ‘Why are we being so hard on the homeless. Where are they expected to go?’”
With more public attention on law enforcement’s actions, officers too have to be extra careful about their perception, Cloud said.
Hawkins challenged his co-councilors to check out the garage, and if they didn’t believe him, he’d lead a party to go check it out “with a couple of flashlights” immediately after the adjournment of the meeting.
“I don’t think we’re doing enough. Sorry, I don’t mean to bust anyone’s bubble, but that’s just the way it is,” he said.
Back in 2013, the St. Albans parking garage was the first major project paid for by using tax increment financing, and it has since acted as a major crux of the city’s efforts to transform its downtown over the last decade.
According to prior reporting, concerns around safety were brought up at the time of its proposal, but the city succeeded in securing the votes necessary to move it forward with the understanding that more lights and more security would improve the area.
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I am not sure why city counselors have not looked into and voted for the city to put surveillance cameras in the garage so it can be monitored. There is a lot of illegal activity that happens in the garage, and vehicles get hit while parked there. Look what is happening in Burlington, camera do make a difference.
I would be afraid to park my car there….
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