By day, the five-story parking garage across from Brian Snyder’s downtown Cheyenne business does what a parking garage is supposed to do — but after dark, he says, it turns into a late-night free-for-all.
“It’s a dumpster fire,” Snyder, owner of Bohemian Metals, told Cowboy State Daily.
Snyder lives above his shop across from the Jack R. Spiker Parking Structure and has had a front-row seat to what happens there after downtown workers head home.
He says vehicles race through the concrete structure, modified exhaust systems echo through the garage and set off car alarms, and people congregate there into the early morning.
It can go on until 4 or 5 a.m., he said.
“And then there’s the issue with people that are, you know, living in their vehicles in the parking garage,” Snyder said.
That issue brought Cheyenne Police to Spiker on Tuesday.
A caller reported to emergency dispatch that three or four vehicles on the first floor appeared to have people living in them, including a black Jeep Cherokee and an older silver minivan. The caller said some had been there for about six months.
Cheyenne Police officers responded at about 12:15 p.m. Oct. 20 to investigate a trespassing report.
Officers contacted a 19-year-old woman sitting in her car, Cheyenne Police spokeswoman Alex Farkas said on Wednesday morning. She was advised that the vehicle needed to be moved, complied and left the garage.
For Snyder, the call was the latest complaint involving a structure he says has been a headache for downtown neighbors for years.
Police Say Calls Remain Low
Cheyenne Police don't characterize people living in the garage as a common problem.
“While this is not a regular occurrence, officers occasionally encounter people using the garage for purposes other than parking,” Farkas said. “When these situations are reported, officers respond to assess the circumstances and take appropriate action.”
Every circumstance is different, she said, but if officers believe someone could benefit from community resources, they discuss those options with the person.
“Overall, call volume at the garage remains low, and proactive measures continue to provide a heightened level of security for those who use it daily,” Farkas said.
The city has taken repeated steps to monitor activity there.
Farkas said a private security company patrols Spiker at night. Brighter LED lights and battery-powered backup lights have been installed in stairwells, parking spaces have been repainted, speed bumps have been added and the interior walls have been painted white to increase visibility.
Emergency call stations have also been installed, and access to the fourth floor is restricted by a gate that's opened for large events, she said.
Those measures are part of a years-long effort to address both problems and perceptions surrounding the downtown garage.
In April 2025, Mayor Patrick Collins acknowledged complaints from downtown businesses while saying the city's private overnight security patrol had made a difference.
“It’s very disappointing to me that people think that’s a place they should be able to go play with their vehicles,” Collins told Cowboy State Daily at the time.
Collins said the city closed off the fourth floor in part to discourage people from using it as a party spot and a place to spin vehicles and make noise.
“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.”
Council Considerations
In an October 2024 council update, Ward III Councilman Mark Rinne wrote that “although the data does not support it,” there was a “lingering perception” that Spiker wasn't safe.
Council consequently approved sixth-penny funding for eight emergency call stations equipped with cameras and direct connections to emergency dispatch, along with upgrades to the garage's bathrooms.
The city spent $269,000 renovating the public restrooms, which reopened in June 2024 with vandalism-resistant fixtures and regular security patrols.
“We wanted to create a facility that people weren’t afraid to go out and actually use,” Ward I Councilman Jeff White said when the work was completed.
“What we hope is that this is going to create a safe and welcoming environment for our downtown visitors,” Councilman Pete Laybourn said.
The conversation didn't end there.
In May 2025, Collins wrote that downtown merchants had met with Police Chief Mark Francisco and city officials specifically to discuss Spiker.
“We need people, especially Downtown employees, to use the garage so customers have places to park,” Collins wrote, saying the meeting focused on improving both safety and use of the facility.
A month later, after a motorcyclist slammed into a concrete wall inside the garage, Collins said the city was again stepping up enforcement.
The Cheyenne City Council approved $100,000 in police overtime, some of which Collins said would go toward additional Spiker patrols.
“We all feel like that is not appropriate and really disappointing, especially for the gentleman who owns Bohemian Metals,” Collins said of the continued hot-rodding. “He lives above his building, and that noise keeps him up at night.”
Laybourn was similarly blunt.
“The parking garage has our full attention,” he said. “We will continue our efforts because it’s the heart of downtown.”
More than a year later, Snyder says the view from his apartment window hasn't convinced him the problem has been solved.
‘Public-Funded Blight’
Snyder has his own term for the garage: “Public-funded blight.”
His frustration, he said, isn't simply that people make noise across the street from his home.
“I'm a taxpayer. You know, I'm a property owner. I have an investment here,” Snyder said.
He questions whether a private-property owner would be allowed to tolerate the same behavior he says routinely happens at the city-owned structure.
Snyder said he wasn't opposed to the garage from the beginning.
“I was open-minded,” he said. “I didn't start off being a naysayer on the parking garage. I've had to learn the hard way since they put it in.”
Before several stories of concrete occupied the block, he remembers a very different downtown space.
There was a surface parking lot with a large pine tree in the middle. It doubled as something of a community gathering place.
“It was so much more friendly, so much nicer,” he said.
The municipal parking lot was incorporated into the Downtown Cheyenne Historic District in a 1996 survey because significant buildings surrounded it and the open lot provided “visual continuity” among them.
The lot was also a focal point for the Farmers Market, Oktoberfest, Cheyenne Frontier Days Pancake Breakfast and the city's Christmas tree.
Those events drew substantial crowds downtown and helped support surrounding merchants and service businesses, according to city records.
After the garage was built, Depot Plaza took over much of that role as the downtown center for special events — but the decision to replace that open space with a parking structure wasn't without a fight.
Wyoming Supreme Court
The political and legal battle over financing the downtown parking garage ultimately reached Wyoming's highest court.
On May 13, 2002, Cheyenne City Council passed Resolution No. 4307 authorizing up to $9.575 million in refunding and improvement revenue bonds.
Part of the money was intended to build a new off-street downtown parking facility. Another portion would refinance debt associated with the George S. Cox parking garage, which the city had financed with revenue bonds in 1994.
The new bonds were to be repaid using parking revenue, with Cheyenne's share of federal mineral royalties pledged as additional security.
Cheyenne resident James D. Mathewson challenged the city's decision.
The dispute wasn't simply over whether Cheyenne should have another garage. It centered on how City Council had authorized the bonds.
The city used a resolution. Mathewson argued the bonds should have been approved by ordinance. Among his arguments was that using a resolution deprived citizens of the ability to challenge the decision through the initiative process.
The lawsuit was filed May 24, 2002, four days before the scheduled bond closing, preventing the sale from going forward while the case was litigated.
A district court sided with Cheyenne.
Then the Wyoming Supreme Court did too.
The garage eventually did move forward. It opened July 2, 2004.
Nine years later, on July 2, 2013, the city formally renamed it the Jack R. Spiker Parking Facility in honor of the former mayor, who served from 2001 through 2009 after serving eight years on City Council.
Still Paying, Still Improving
The city's parking-garage debt traces back to bonds originally issued in 1994 for construction of the Cox garage.
Those bonds were refinanced in 2003 to incorporate construction costs for Spiker and refinanced again in later years.
City budget documents show Cheyenne was still carrying millions of dollars in combined parking-garage debt more than two decades after Spiker opened, with the remaining debt scheduled to be retired in 2028. And taxpayers have continued investing in the structure.
Voters approved sixth-penny sales tax funding for downtown improvements in 2021, which the city subsequently used for projects at Spiker.
Beyond the $269,000 restroom renovation and emergency call towers, City Council approved another $253,527 in 2025 to paint the garage's interior white, which the city said would improve visibility and the perception of safety.
Spiker remains part of Cheyenne's capital-improvement plans.
The city's 2026 sixth-penny downtown proposal included replacing the garage's original elevators as part of a broader $4 million package of downtown improvements.
For Snyder, none of that means a parking garage inherently doesn't belong downtown.
“I'm not gonna say that a parking garage can't be a positive thing for a city,” he said.
His complaint is about what happens when parking stops being the primary activity.
“The people that should be going in there should be people that are going in there to park,” Snyder said. “That's what it is.”
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
