The St James Parking

[Anonymous]

How can a facility in a huge industrial area manage to have the absolute worst parking setup in the entire city?

I had my son out there last weekend for hockey tryouts and it was a disaster of a mess. People were parking on the grass, curbs, in front of fire hydrants and fire lanes. I'm not quite sure how the county doesn't crack down on them, it was just safety violation after safety violation.

If you didn't want to park in a fire lane, you could either drop your kid at the front door and hope that a 8 year old didn't get lost finding their way through thousands of random people in the facility or you could park at their "off-site" lot that is 15 minutes away, and make them carry all of their hockey gear through the light rain. Great setup, really smart and safe.

After he made the team I couldn't reject the offer fast enough - no chance I'd paying money to deal with that nonsense all year. We'll just stay at Caps Academy and pay $1 for the ample garage parking.

[Anonymous]

I'm a member and get a parking pass. It's fine--no different from any large sporting complex that has a lot of people coming in for big sporting events. If this is your biggest problem, I envy you.

[Anonymous]

OP - I’ve been there once and agree that the parking was a mess. The illegally parked cars made it almost impossible to get out of a parking spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a member and get a parking pass. It's fine--no different from any large sporting complex that has a lot of people coming in for big sporting events. If this is your biggest problem, I envy you.

So after paying $4000+ for their child to play there they should pay another $200 a month to get guaranteed member parking so that they can safely bring their child to their games and practices? There are a lot of out of touch comments in some of these threads but this one is right up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a member and get a parking pass. It's fine--no different from any large sporting complex that has a lot of people coming in for big sporting events. If this is your biggest problem, I envy you.

So after paying $4000+ for their child to play there they should pay another $200 a month to get guaranteed member parking so that they can safely bring their child to their games and practices? There are a lot of out of touch comments in some of these threads but this one is right up there.

I mean, having an 8 year old play club hockey is also a little "out of touch." so, I don't think that response was too off base.

[Anonymous]

Parking has been terrible every time we have been there for basketball. Truly terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a member and get a parking pass. It's fine--no different from any large sporting complex that has a lot of people coming in for big sporting events. If this is your biggest problem, I envy you.

So after paying $4000+ for their child to play there they should pay another $200 a month to get guaranteed member parking so that they can safely bring their child to their games and practices? There are a lot of out of touch comments in some of these threads but this one is right up there.

I don't pay $4000 for my child to play any sport--they do sports through their public schools that are either zero cost or far less than $4000 and don't involve me fighting for parking. I do pay 160$ a month for my own gym membership to safeguard my own health--medical bills and dying young are also expensive.

[Anonymous]

We were there for the volleyball tournament. After parking in the lot 15 min away and walking in the rain Sat, you forgot to mention the walk was through blocks filled with garbage. Not just food and litter but tires and parts of broken car parts. It was sketchy walking back to pick up the car with no one around in the dark at 9pm. I never want to go there again either after doing that on Saturday and Sunday.

[Anonymous]

Long time STJ member. I've never seen the parking be so bad until a few weekends this year. Really so bad. Park by the train tracks bad.

The people violating basic parking rules are just unbelievable to me. I get parking on the grass in some areas. But not on the sidewalk or blocking sidewalks/walkways or fire lanes or blocking other parked cars. I do know some people report it to the police. Not sure what is remotely done...

[Anonymous]

I kid practices there and the parking have gotten ridiculously bad. I just park in the grass and tear it up on my out. If they don’t want me to do that, fix the parking situation.

[Anonymous]

It’s terrible. We go there for swim meets occasionally and I dread it every.damn.time. Why they didn’t think to build a parking garage is beyond me. The pool deck is equally as bad. The poor kids have nowhere to sit on deck that isn’t within feet of the water on 2 sides of the pool. Very poorly designed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s terrible. We go there for swim meets occasionally and I dread it every.damn.time. Why they didn’t think to build a parking garage is beyond me. The pool deck is equally as bad. The poor kids have nowhere to sit on deck that isn’t within feet of the water on 2 sides of the pool. Very poorly designed.

We literally skipped a swim meet at St. James this year because I just could not deal with the parking and facilities nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s terrible. We go there for swim meets occasionally and I dread it every.damn.time. Why they didn’t think to build a parking garage is beyond me. The pool deck is equally as bad. The poor kids have nowhere to sit on deck that isn’t within feet of the water on 2 sides of the pool. Very poorly designed.

We have a majority of our families saying they are going to boycott any meets at St. James. Making a kid walk a mile in the cold through an industrial park isn't the best impression after a meet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a member and get a parking pass. It's fine--no different from any large sporting complex that has a lot of people coming in for big sporting events. If this is your biggest problem, I envy you.

So after paying $4000+ for their child to play there they should pay another $200 a month to get guaranteed member parking so that they can safely bring their child to their games and practices? There are a lot of out of touch comments in some of these threads but this one is right up there.

The weird thing is that the St. James teams aren't even very good compared to the other local teams. They are always the bottom two AA teams in the league at every age, why would I pay extra money as a parking tax to be on the worst team?

[Anonymous]

We didn't do winter league for lacrosse this year for this reason.