Raising a Stink: 7 Corners Stairways Being Used as Bathroom?

Drive through the Seven Corners Shopping Center, and you’re likely to find shoppers heading in to Barnes & Noble to purchase books or the adjacent Starbucks for a latte.

Just across the parking lot, you can usually find groups of men loitering in the area looking for work each morning.

Nearby, there’s a walking bridge that stretches over Route 50 where a hidden stairway is being used as a bathroom — human feces have been found and on top of that, no one seems to be cleaning up, according to a report by ABC7.

As Jimmy Fallon might say: “Ewww!”

It seems one problem has started another problem.

The walking bridge cost $5 million and was put there so that people would stop putting themselves in danger of getting hit by cars on Route 50 as they crossed the roadway. But the stairways for the bridge, hidden from view because of their design, are apparently being used as bathrooms.

Workers who loiter in the parking lots looking for work are the likely culprits, a resident tells WTOP.

Each morning, dozens of men can be seen hanging out near the stairs, near the Home Depot and around other areas in the shopping center parking lot, including near another stairway that connects the upper and lower parking lots.

The plan to “fix” the human feces problem, the TV station reports: Fairfax County Supervisor Penny Gross wanted to redesign the bridge at a cost of $100,000 to make the stairways transparent, so no one could use the area as a bathroom.

But the funding appears unlikely. Meanwhile, Gross tells the TV station “there needs to be a long-term solution. That long-term solution is the state needs to maintain their bridge in all of its forms.”

Gross said the state needs to clean up the bridge, but VDOT says they are only responsible for the structural integrity.