After-hours mayhem sparks Napier car park lockdown

Napier's Tiffen Park parking building, which is now being closed at night after the failure of other attempts to curb unruly behaviour. Photo / Warren Buckland

Napier’s biggest council-owned parking building is to be closed at night after the failure of council and police efforts to curb noise issues and unruly, antisocial behaviour.

The two-level Tiffen Park parking building, off Tennyson St and between the Municipal Theatre and Shelley St, will be locked at night from December 19 due to public safety and noise concerns, but will be open on a controlled basis when significant events are on at the theatre.

A council spokesperson said that since May this year, the council had been working with police to address issues raised by residents and businesses, but the efforts have “not been successful”, and the decision was undertaken on police advice.

The council will continue to monitor the situation, and will consider reopening the carpark at night in the future if it can do so without the problems returning or putting public safety at risk.

Users of the area say the building - particularly the open-air upper level - is a night-time gathering place for young people with sporty vehicles, with the associated noise of revving of engines and music blasting from their audio systems.

There have also been other people and groups, including occasional homeless people, with risks of confrontation and violence.

A notable case of antisocial behaviour over the years was that in 2008 of a teenaged ‘piddler on the roof’ - images captured him urinating in an arc into the coin slot of an upper-level pay-and-display meter and filling the meter’s ticket dispenser.

Following public release of the images and global media interest, an 18-year-old turned himself in at Napier Police Station, with media interest such that when he appeared in court charged with wilful damage, more than a dozen journalists, including photographers, missed the unrelated simultaneous appearance in a room next door of a Napier insurance company general manager admitting to embezzling more than $3 million.

As the media scrum outside surrounded the errant teenager, who was given “diversion” and told to pay $200 to the city council, embezzler Blair Fitzsimons slipped past unnoticed, on bail pending an eventual sentence of four and a half years’ imprisonment.

The car park was built for the city council and opened in 2000 with 58 spaces on the ground level and 63 above, adjacent to the mainly-leased space in the Municipal Theatre car park.