Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 21, 1995 TAG: 9502210073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY AND MATT CHITTUM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FRIDAY NIGHT IN DOWNTOWN ROANOKE - It's 6:30 outside the city parking garage at Williamson Road and Tazewell Avenue. With a dozen or so other people, John Blankenship and his wife, Sherill, stand stiffly in a cold breeze waiting for a Valley Metro shuttle bus.
The Southwest Roanoke County residents are on their way to see an almost-sold-out production of "Guys and Dolls" at the 2,400-seat Civic Center auditorium, one mile away.
As they file onto the bus, the dapper couple settles in next to hockey fans in jeans and Roanoke Express hats and jerseys. They're among the 6,016 people heading to the adjacent arena to eat hot dogs, drink beer and holler for the home team.
The game is an hour away, and the musical doesn't start for 90 minutes. So why is the bus already two-thirds full?
"The traffic getting in and out of there can be murder, and I just don't have the patience to deal with it," John Blankenship says.
Bedford resident Nadine Scicchitano and her daughter, Ashley, are headed to the hockey game. It's their third or fourth time taking the shuttle.
The shuttle is "a lot quicker," she says. "You can get back on [the bus] and get your car and be on your way home while people are still trying to get out of the parking lot."
Besides the hassle, she saved the two bucks it would have cost to park in the civic center lot.
"I wonder what they do with all that money," she says.
Welcome to the Roanoke Civic Center parking lot shuffle.
John Blankenship is right. Driving near the civic center on dual-event nights can be murder. Parking may be even tougher.
Just do the math. Up to 14,000 people may descend upon the complex when it's in full swing. The lot outside has room for 1,850 cars.
The result: The lot gets packed tighter than a supermarket's bread aisle before a snowstorm.
Assistant Civic Center Manager Bob Poole says that on busy nights, with events starting at 8 p.m., the lot usually is closed by 7:15.
Latecomers are steered toward the Williamson Road garage, where parking and bus service are free. But not everybody heeds that advice.
So, surrounding streets become flanked on both sides with a gantlet of trucks, vans, four-wheel-drives and cars. Never mind the "no parking" signs.
And other lots nearby, like McDonald's across the street, the U.S. Post Office on Rutherford Avenue and the Holiday Inn on Orange Avenue, fall victim to interlopers.
But the parking poachers are taking a risk. Tow-truck drivers may be out in force. Passing up that free shuttle ride so as not to miss a few minutes of puck-passing could put a $60 dent in fans' wallets.
Mike Abrams is a veteran of the parking lot shuffle. He's one of 20 part-time parking attendants on duty. Tonight, he's working at the entrance across Williamson Road from Magic City Motors. At 7 p.m., the lot still has a fair share of empty spaces. Abrams figures that won't last long.
Cars pull up, and arms emerge from them, thrusting crumpled bills and handfuls of quarters at his cohorts. Only a few drivers say thank you; most are silent.
Gary Harrison of Roanoke thinks $2 is steep. He's already shelled out $52 for two tickets to "Guys and Dolls."
"But it's worse when you pay seven bucks to go to a hockey game and then have to pay another $2," Harrison adds.
This is how the civic center handles the crunch: The early birds get parked closest to the building; the latecomers get waved into the far reaches. Attendants point parkers along curbs and onto grassy areas. When every corner is full, they shut the gates.
"We shut it off and tell [drivers] to catch the shuttle bus back," Abrams says. "They get angry, sometimes very angry."
The average hockey fan is no problem. Most of them are regulars and don't mind being herded around, Abrams explains.
"To be honest with you, the symphony [fans] are the worst," he says. "A lot of them think they're supposed to get extra privileges. They want us to move cones for them, they want to go down whatever lane they want."
It's the professional wrestling fans who raise McDonald's owner John Ford's ire.
"I expect we'll tow 15 or 20 cars off the lot at the next wrestling event," Ford says. "It's usually those people that don't want to pay the $2 to park."
Tonight, there are two or three customers in McDonald's, but a couple dozen cars have the restaurant's lot in a full Nelson. No security officers or tow trucks are in sight. It appears Ford has chosen submission over a fight.
It's 7:05 p.m., 25 minutes until the puck is dropped. The actors won't take the stage for nearly an hour.
Cars are queued up from the entrance gate on Williamson to Orange Avenue. There's another long line on northbound Williamson trying to turn left into the civic center. Still more cars are backed up in the eastbound lane of Orange all the way to Interstate 581.
Roanoke police Sgt. Pat Shumate is trying to direct traffic - one of six officers on duty outside the civic center. Only one car has nearly run him over tonight, he says.
"The big bottleneck is the fee they have to pay," Shumate says.
Roanokers Jack and Betty Phillips come ambling up the sidewalk from Orange Avenue. They're on their way to the play. They're asked where they parked.
The Phillipses smile. They've got it all figured out.
"Up on the lot," he says, gesturing with his thumb. "We got here at quarter to 6 to get a parking spot. Then we walked over to Western Sizzlin' for dinner."
7:15 p.m. The game will start in 15 minutes; the show a half-hour later. The civic center marquee says it's 45 degrees outside, but it feels colder. Traffic is stopped at the gates; cars are lined up in both directions.
Passengers flee the gridlock, jumping out of cars and heading up the civic center driveway.
A frustrated motorist in a gray Ford Taurus can't take it any longer. He hasn't moved in more than a minute. He honks his horn repeatedly.
By now, the parking lot attendants aren't allowing people to turn left off Williamson. Instead, those cars are forced to make U-turns. Some spin their wheels and take off in a huff, ignoring the city police cruiser nearby.
A driver in a pickup truck ignores the attendant's signal and brazenly barrels into the lot. Nobody stops him - the attendants just stand around and laugh. But another driver in a red Firebird who's already made his U-turn is angry. He pulls over and hops out.
"Hey buddy! How come you can let those damn people in and not me!" he shouts. He climbs back in the Firebird and takes off. The vanity tags on his car read "SHUT UP."
By 7:30, the lots are closed. Inside the shuttle buses it's standing room only. Passengers sway in the aisles. Traffic is barely moving on Williamson Road. Tempers are rising.
Tony Grubb has the thankless job of defending the gate opposite Rutherford Avenue. Protected by a blaze-orange vest and armed with a flashlight, he stands like a modern-day version of Hektor at the gates of Troy. Each car is a potential Trojan Horse.
Motorists beg and plead. Some offer bribes. Anything to get a parking space.
One mini-van speeds up, and a man hangs out its window waving a fistful of bills.
"I saw a space in there," he leers, shaking the money insistently. Nothing doing. Grubb holds his ground.
Another car pulls up. The passenger, a gray-haired woman with pursed lips, cranks down the window.
"Well, where do you suggest we park?" the woman demands to a bystander she mistakes for a parking attendant. When he explains he doesn't work there, she fires back:
"Well if you did, maybe you could do something about this mess!"
Grubb is obligated to let in cars with handicap tags, but sometimes that creates more problems.
"I don't know if you're going to find a spot," he says skeptically to one handicapped driver. "But I gotta let you in."
As it rolls into the lot, other drivers try to follow. But Grubb bravely waves them on.
"Don't even put your turn signal on," he says to no one in particular. "Just keep on going."
Back opposite Magic City Motors, attendant Abrams explains that the civic center gets lots of calls from latecomers who park illegally and later find their cars towed.
The worst possible place to park is the post office on Rutherford Avenue, he says. McDonald's and the Holiday Inn have also been known to have cars towed off their lots.
Towed drivers aren't shy about complaining a day or so later.
"They call here and complain and say, 'One of those [attendants] told me to park there!'" Abrams says. "Well, we wear name badges, see. And we say, 'What was his name?' And they say, 'I dunno.'
"We tell them not to park at the post office. If they park there, there's a 100 percent chance they will not have a car when they get back," he says.
Jerry Eaton of Giles County can vouch for that.
Last fall, his daughters, age 20 and 15, fell victim to the tow man during a hockey game. They had parked illegally in the post office lot after being herded away from the civic center driveway.
Eaton says his daughters followed other drivers into the post office. The car was gone when they returned.
An idling taxi was waiting for them. Three other fans were already packed inside. The cabbie wanted $5 from each person for a half-mile ride to the impound lot, Eaton says.
The young women, who'd spent most of their money at the game, had only $5 between them. The cabbie refused to take both. Eaton's younger daughter had to wait alone in the dark along Williamson Road.
At the impound lot, the tow company wanted cash. The elder daughter had to beg them to take a $60 check.
She asked for directions back to the civic center.
"They said very hatefully, `Just go back the way you came,''' Eaton says. She had to call her parents on a cellular phone and get directions from them.
Eaton complained to the civic center, to city hall and to the taxi company. Nobody seemed to care, he says. A woman at the taxi company said the cab ride shouldn't have cost more than a couple bucks for the whole carload.
"My daughter, she won't go back to hockey games anymore. It was just a bad experience all around," Eaton says. "If nobody's willing to do anything about this, next time they have an overflow crowd, 28 more people are going to get towed."
On this night, that's not going to happen.
After months of fielding complaint calls and feeling powerless to do anything about it, Civic Center Manager Bob Chapman has decided to take action. Recently, he stationed a guard at the post office lot. It means only a few extra bucks for security officer Harold McCann. But it costs the tow company and the cabbies plenty.
By 7:45 p.m., McCann has told dozens of drivers they ought not park there.
Some "just look at you like, `Why not?'" McCann says.
He replies they can park there if they wish, but they run a pretty good risk of finding their cars gone later.
McCann's sympathy doesn't run very deep.
"These are people who are just habitually late," he says. "They'll be late when they die."
The usually troublesome lot remains mostly empty well past the play's beginning. A few cars roll slowly by the guard as people wave envelopes to be mailed. They're legit.
by CNB