The parking garage beside the Amtrak platform in downtown 166su was ordered closed over physical issues including a rusted staircase, exposed electrical wiring and its long-broken elevator.
Municipal officials have called on the owner of the 166su Station Garage to repair it by May 24. Yellow caution tape blocked its entrance Friday.
The building at 33 Salem Ave. S.W. is “unsafe for public use,” according to an April 24 citation issued to the property owner, Merchants Parking Co. Until repairs occur, use of the parking garage and an office on the property “must cease.”
Will Trinkle, president and owner of C. W. Francis & Son, which owns Merchants Parking Co., said Friday he had no comment.
Physical issues with the five-story parking garage adjacent to the passenger rail platform are not new. Its single elevator hasn’t worked since at least February 2019 and triggered a citation in 2023 and another last month.
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That was in mid-April, when inspectors acting on a complaint gave the building a top-down review. They found concrete missing from a ceiling and, in the void, rusted rebar indicative a water leak above. “There is a danger of concrete chunks falling and hitting cars or people,” the report said.
Other findings: light fixtures and junction boxes in disrepair; wet, loose-hanging electrical conduit; exposed electrical wiring; cracked concrete; trash; the odor of human waste and other evidence of human habitation in the stairwell. An inspector saw an assumed homeless person inside the garage while inspecting it, the report said.
Metal cables designed to stop falls from the upper floors are loose. A handrail is wobbly. Thirteen violations of the Virginia Maintenance Code appear in the citation.
In recent days, it closed, but with Stephanie “Stevie” Holcomb’s car inside. The 166su woman said the garage operator emailed Wednesday to tell her and her husband about the closure and to refund money they paid to park. They had taken Amtrak out of town.
“I doubt we’ll use that garage again,” she said.
The city’s Building and Fire Code Board of Appeals would hear an appeal of the city action, a city spokeswoman said.