NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Vehicles downtown are being tagged and told to move immediately after WSMV4 Investigates discovered prime parking spaces downtown in a city garage are being taken up by suspected abandoned cars. The warnings were issued just days after WSMV4 Investigates started asking the city questions.
For weeks now, WSMV4 Investigates has been documenting how many cars have been sitting in the city’s Public Square Garage blocking drivers from some of the most affordable parking spots downtown.
Multiple cars sit with flat tires. Several cars have no plates. Many have expired plates, one as long ago as 2012. WSMV4 Investigates is not the only one who noticed.
Runner Tyree Peters did too when he parked for The Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon last weekend.
“There was one right next to me,” Peters said. “It was like covered in dust. That’s been sitting there for a while.”
The cars in question are at the Public Square Garage. It is a Metro-owned garage that Mayor Freddie O’Connell has encouraged people to use.
“Generally speaking, Metro garages tend to be easy to park in,” O’Connell said in a roundtable discussion in March.
But when WSMV4 Investigates drove through, we counted 42 suspected abandoned cars taking up some of the best spots. We first noticed this issue on March 25. We went back every week for more than a month and found the same cars still sitting in the same spots.
“If it was my garage, they’d be gone,” Peters said.
The garage is managed by the Nashville Downtown Partnership and owned by the city. Neither the partnership nor the mayor would agree to an interview about this. Both suggested these cars may belong to people who have the $190 monthly parking pass. After WSMV4 Investigates started asking questions, including on Friday, action was taken.
We drove through again and found 27 cars now had notices on them reading “Suspected Abandoned Vehicle.” The notices give the owners 30 days to get them out. Collectively, the monthly fee they would owe would be more than $5,000 just for the month we have been documenting.
“That is lost revenue, absolutely,” Peters said.
Money made from parking in that garage goes directly back to the city. In a roundtable discussion Friday, Mayor O’Connell touched on how revenue is flat compared to what it’s been in previous years.
WSMV4 asked the mayor’s office and the Nashville Downtown Partnership who exactly directed the removal of the cars. Friday afternoon, Jeanette Barker with the Nashville Downtown Partnership told us “The inquiry prompted a thorough review of overnight cars.”
Here’s the Tennessee Department of Revenue’s definition of an “abandoned vehicle”:
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