Wharf Parking Garage 1 - Sutton Square SW Entrance

I visited The Anthem for a concert last week and tried to park here. Despite the official wharf parking site saying this was around 80% full and row after row showing green lights and indicating there were up to a dozen spots open, I couldn't find a single one. After slowly making my way around and realizing there was nowhere to park, I still had to pay $6 on my way out. Save yourself some time and just head right to Garage 3.

One of the worst designed parking garages in the DMV. Park here if you want to spend 20 minutes in a confusing maze with inacurrate available spot signs (see picture) if you are going to the Wharf, just metro/Uber unless you are looking for some parking lot adrenaline rage.

This garage or another operated by Colonial Parking in the immediate area (it’s not clear) operate the valet services at the Intercontinental Hotel. They managed to return my car with a scrape on the side. They denied it, even after watching the security footage showing that the car was dropped off in their care without damage and returned with damage! The hotel didn’t offer to share their footage and have been impossible to reach on the phone subsequently. Colonial’s staff don’t have a strong command of English so it’s quite a process trying to communicate with them (unless you speak Amharic) while they are trying to flat out deny responsibility. If you use their valet services be sure to video your car at drop off and check it upon return or you could be in for a nasty surprise at mid

This is the worst parking garage I have ever experienced. It runs underneath the entirety of the wharf, and it's a poorly designed nightmare with parking indicators that will say they're open when all the spots are full, nightmare traffic layouts, inconsistent and confusing signage and unable to handle the capacity of people using it. On top of this, it's over $10 an hour, and it took us an hour total just getting in and out of this thing. Whoever designed this parking garage should lose their job, seriously, avoid this garage at all costs. We paid $49 for 4 hours at a kiosk and after sitting in the traffic to get out of the garage, when we got to the exit it said we owed an additional $12. Absolutely ridiculous scam.

Great signage to help me figure where i was and how to get to the Anthem. Really well lit inside of the garage. I loved that there were staff directing people to empty spots. There are spots reserved for residents of the building but they are clearly labeled. The only thing i found a little cumbersome was the system for payment. You definitely want to pay before leaving and have a back up card because the reader is a little temperamental. Honestly it's to be expected with a machine that gets as much use as these do.