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Parking problems cause headaches in Sterling
Employees who work in the East Glenn business park off Carpenter Drive and Glenn Drive in Sterling are frustrated.
They are constantly having to fight for a place to park in their office complex parking lot because there aren't enough spaces for the number of people who work there.
"We're really [upset]," said Dave Waldroup, owner of River Bend Remodeling. "My people have no place to park. We have to play musical chairs with our cars twice a day."
This started about a month ago when the Virginia Department of Transportation drew lines on Carpenter and Glenn drives, turning them into four-lane roads with no place to park.
Prior to that, employees could park their cars and work vehicles along the two roads with no problem.
"Those streets are hardly ever used," Waldroup said. "I didn't see a problem with workers parking on the street."
But about a month ago, the streets were suddenly off-limits and anyone parking on them was towed.
Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) said unauthorized commercial vehicles were being parked and abandoned in the area, causing a safety and security concern. He said it was encouraging people to loiter there outside of business hours, as well as impairing visibility for drivers. He said restriping the streets was the cheapest and easiest way to solve the problem.
"It is one of the most remarkable transformations from a truck cemetery to what it should be – a functioning business district," Delgaudio said.
The unfortunate and unintended outcome was for the businesses in East Glenn to be affected, he said.
Now employees of the 12 office units there are left with about 60 parking spaces and three visitor spots that are limited to 15-minute parking.
Elkins Painting and Wallcovering has five employees but only four parking spaces.
"It's a big problem," said the secretary there, who didn't want her name printed in the newspaper. “... One guy just has to find somewhere else to park, and there is nowhere. People are parking on the grass."
Waldroup said his company has eight parking spaces, since it occupies two units, but in addition to employee vehicles, the company has three work vans. In the morning when employees arrive, they have to move the vans and park their cars in those spaces, he said, and then they move their cars once the vans are returned in the afternoon.
Don Dawson, an employee and former owner of the Metropolitan Audio Visual Corp. said he is most upset that businesses were never told this might happen.
"It isn't fair," he said. "There was nothing in any sales agreement about not parking excess cars on the street. Now we have no place to park."
Delgaudio said he will continue to work on the problem and hopes to be able to come to a solution.
"We have to figure out how we can correct this problem without creating a worse problem for the county," he said.
Contact the reporter at ecoe@timespapers.com
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