The bright blue car was small, but the sound it made was big. And the driver was clearly relishing it as he approached the exit of a downtown Cheyenne parking garage that surrounding business owners say is a nightmare on 17th Street.
The vehicle’s driver paused the revving routine briefly at the exit, making sure nothing was coming. Then the vehicle sped out of the garage, accelerating quickly. That forced the modified car to backfire loudly, like a gun going off.
“There you go,” Bohemian Metals owner, Brian Snyder said to Cowboy State Daily, shaking his head. “See what I mean?
Snyder, who lives in an apartment above his store on 17th Street, said the blue car’s routine is an all-too familiar occurrence for him. It begins after about 5 p.m. every day, and continues, off and on, even into the early morning hours.
“Their thing is driving through the garage,” he said. “That’s the funnest time of their life or day, to race through the parking garage and fire off in there. It can go as late as 3 o’clock in the morning with that. And, as the summer gets warmer, there’s more people, so it just continues.”
The popping sound from someone’s tail pipes going off wakes Snyder almost every night.
Recently, the city shut off the top floor of the garage, to discourage the practice, Snyder acknowledged.
“That has helped a little bit,” he said. “But they’re still driving through there, and it’s every evening. It’s keeping anyone who lives on this street awake, and it makes it hard to run a business here. It’s affecting the people who come downtown to eat or to shop, who are actually using the parking facility to park.”
Snyder said people also use the parking garage for unsavory activity, because the garage provides a great cover. There’s no one present full-time to watch what’s going on.
“I know of rapes, I know of shots fired,” Snyder said. “I know of multiple assaults. And it doesn’t matter that the police station is a half block away. It just doesn’t factor in.”
Snyder has also had two of his vehicles vandalized twice by people using the garage. In one case, a Toyota Tacoma came zooming out of the garage and rammed right into a vehicle Snyder had parked in front of his business.
“I was like sitting there talking to someone on the phone,” Snyder said.
He ran outside to take pictures of the vehicle as it was speeding away, trying to get the license plate. But when he looked at the photos there was no license plate.
That’s because it had come off, and was lying on the ground at his feet, along with part of the vehicle.
Brian Snyder looks across the street at the garage on 17th Street in Cheyenne, which he says is nightly the scene of cars revving their engines and popping their exhaust, as well as other questionable activities. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Cheyenne has taken steps to improve a problem downtown parking garage and make it safer. But business owners say there continue to be nightly noise violations, as well as vandalism. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Cheyenne has taken steps to improve a problem downtown parking garage and make it safer. But business owners say there continue to be nightly noise violations, as well as vandalism. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
Megan Giatroudakis, owner of Collectors Hub next door to Bohemian Metals on 17th Street, said she's made numerous calls to police over the parking garage across from her business for things like noise violations and vandalism. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Cheyenne has taken steps to improve a problem downtown parking garage and make it safer. But business owners say there continue to be nightly noise violations, as well as vandalism. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
Paintballing Her Business
Snyder’s neighbor, Megan Giatroudakis, who owns the Collectors Hub next door, has similar stories and said she’s made frequent calls to the police department.
“The cars are zooming in and out of there,” she said. “And it’s all loud teenagers and young, 20-year-olds speeding up and down.”
But they also throw things off the side of the garage and yell at people, she said.
“There are constant burnouts,” she added. “And then loud trucks zooming up there and everything. It gets pretty chaotic, especially at night.”
She personally hasn’t heard any shots fired and doesn’t know of any assaults. But she knows of at least one kidnapping incident, and said her own business has been vandalized.
“Years before, right after the Christmas parade ended, someone was either on the second or third floor (of the garage),” she said. “And they paint-balled the awning out there and tried to get the windows upstairs.”
Giatroudakis doesn’t know if the individuals were caught. She took pictures of the cars speeding away, as well as the green and yellow paint smeared on the front of the business.
Giatroudakis uses the parking garage herself during the day. She said she believes it’s probably safe during the day at least.
But she admits her head is “on a swivel” the entire time she’s walking there, and she has her phone out, ready to use, just in case. She also makes sure to park on the main floor, so she can watch her car throughout the day.
“You don’t feel 100% safe,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything happen myself. But I think it was last year we had a police officer come in here and ask about surveillance, because they had somebody kidnapped in the garage.”
Giatroudakis has noticed that the city hired a security guard to patrol the garage at night, but shedoesn’t feel it’s necessarily adequate.
“I don’t think they’re able to do anything other than document who is up there,” she said. “And the cars will wait until they’re on (the opposite side) and then zoom up. So, it’s just they’re constantly missing each other.”
On occasions when Giatroudakis has called the police, she said the drivers do much the same thing to evade officers.
“The cops will go in and they have their lookouts,” she said. “So, then they just run out.”
City Has Taken Security Measures
Mayor Patrick Collins told Cowboy State Daily he’s disappointed to hear that problems at the garage are still being talked about.
“A year ago, or maybe a little longer than that ago, we hired a security company to patrol the garage at night,” he said. “And that’s gotten rid of, I would think, most of the problematic behavior they were talking about late at night, with homeless people being in there and that type of thing.”
The uniformed service patrols from 9 or 10 p.m. each night until around 6 a.m. the next day, Collins said.
The security patrol vehicles have flashing lights as well as body cameras to record anything they see. Those recordings are sent to the police department, for eventual follow-up if needed.
“It’s made a real difference I think, both in terms of safety and maybe just the perception of the garage,” Collins said. “I think they’ve done an exceptionally good job.”
Last month, the city also closed off the fourth floor of the garage, where several murals were painted, to discourage using that area as a party spot or a place to spin around and make loud noises.
“It’s very disappointing to me that people think that’s a place they should be able to go play with their vehicles,” Collins said. “But we closed that off, so we could get rid of that behavior, and because, again, it creates that perception that the garage is unsafe because there’s noise coming from above.”
Collins added that the city is looking at ways to further light up the garage at night, including lowering the lights so light disperses better, and painting the walls white.
The city has also installed high-definition cameras in the garage and installed stations where patrons of the garage can alert security if something were to happen.
“We’ve done a lot to change the perception of the garage, and I think the reality is, when you talk to the police department, the garage is very safe,” Collins said. “There’s very few incidents or things that happen in the garage.”
Could Parking Arms Be Next?
Cheyenne is still deciding whether it will install parking garage arms to help deter unwelcome use of the garage, but Collins said that’s an unlikely step if use of the garage remains free.
“We don’t have a consensus yet on the garage,” Collins said. “Is it going to be free, is it going to be a charge for services? If it’s free, there’s no reason to put arms on it. But we’re still working through those issues.”
Part of the idea behind keeping the garage free is to encourage people who are shopping or eating in the downtown area to use the garage, Collins has told Cowboy State Daily previously, rather than street parking. The garage also provides downtown businesses’ workforce a cost-effective parking solution during the day, to help keep more parking spots open.
Parking garage arms aren’t the solution Snyder would like to see, either.
What he’d like to see is full-time security on site throughout the evenings, to keep people from doing wheelies, making noise, vandalizing things, and so forth.
He doesn’t believe that fewer police department calls necessarily means problems at the garage are any less. He himself has mostly given up calling about problems at the garage.
“I could make a call every night and be justified,” he said. “Just the people with their cars, that’s a noise violation. And they’re not using the garage to park their cars.”
The noise the cars make inside the garage is so loud, Snyder said he’s witnessed altercations between drivers showing off noisy vehicles and people trying to use the garage for parking.
“People are screaming at them and stuff like that to shut it off,” Snyder said. “It shouldn’t be like that. It never should have been like that.”
