Crumbling county garage puts a snag in jury duty
MEDIA Potential jurors slated to appear in court Monday and Tuesday got a reprieve Friday with the collapse of a wall section inside the juror parking structure at the corner of Orange and Second streets.
Delaware County Council Chairman John McBlain described the section as a “cosmetic” concrete slab about 6 feet tall and 25 feet long at the top of one of the parking ramps that had separated from its welds.
It is unknown when the detachment occurred, but it was discovered when Park Police opened the parking deck Friday morning, McBlain said. No one was injured, but McBlain said council decided to close the parking deck out of an abundance of caution and would have structural engineers in over the weekend to determine its overall integrity.
McBlain said he had discussed the issue with Common Pleas Court President Judge Kevin F. Kelly and it was decided to call off having jurors appear Monday and Tuesday. About 40 employees in the attached Toal Building have also been relocated.
Media Borough sent out an alert late Friday indicating structural engineers evaluated the garage and encountered “several areas of concern,” leading to street closures in the surrounding area. The closures are on Orange and Citron streets from Front to Third Street, and Amber and Second streets between Orange and Citron streets.
Upper Darby Mayor Tom Micozzie, who also serves as the county’s director of risk management, said a fence would be constructed around the parking garage to ensure pedestrians are also not put at risk from any other potential hazards.
McBlain said jurors returning Wednesday might have to park in the employee parking lot under the government center. Employees who normally park there might be relocated to other satellite parking facilities and be shuttled in, he said.
The parking structure was built in “another time,” McBlain said, probably in about 1970 as an add-on to the Toal and Sweeney buildings that were constructed in the mid-1960s. He did not have exact figures to hand Friday, but said upkeep of the existing facility has likely already cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We have done stabilization and maintenance work on it, but certainly everybody knows the useful life of the parking garage is coming to a close,” McBlain said. “It was a different kind of design from a different time. We wouldn’t build a parking garage this way today.”
There are already plans to demolish and rebuild the parking deck, Toal Building and Sweeney Building. McBlain said the county is working on those plans with Media Borough, but this incident might accelerate that process.
“The concrete slab itself falling off doesn’t imperil the rest of the structure, but since it was all constructed at the same time, we just have a concern that there’s other welds, other parts – if it can happen to one of the slabs, then we want to make sure that before we open it up, some engineer says that they have confidence that it was an isolated event,” he said. “It was certainly our hope that we would just continue to keep it stable through the time that it was reconstructed. We’ll see if that’s possible now.”