Parking garage woes discussed

Lorain County Commissioners address issues at meeting

Lorain County commissioners discussed issues with the County Administration Building’s parking garage at their Nov. 14 meeting.

County Administrator James Cordes said the parking deck is falling down and the top level must be closed.

“The parking deck’s been a problem for a few years,” Cordes said. “It has been looked at.”

The structure has been inspected several times over the last few years, and the assessment earlier this year, specifically looked at the top deck of the garage, he said.

“I’m no engineer, but I can see through the holes up there,” Cordes said.

The conclusion of the latest assessment is that the top level should be closed until the county makes repairs or go forward with an alternate plan.

Cordes said the issue now is that he has to find between 80 and 100 parking spots for the county staff who will be displaced from using the lot.

“Right now, I’m looking at

the parking lot next to the Broad Street building, (374 Broad St.), that formerly housed the probation department,” he said. “That lot will hold 48 (cars), but when we plow snow, that number decreases because it’s a fenced in lot.

“So, absent getting a Bobcat in there and taking the snow out of the lot, I need to leave some areas for the snow to be pushed.

“So, that would probably give me, like, 40 spots, maybe 44 if we keep it tight against the fence with the snow.”

Cordes said he’s also considering utilizing the 90 spots at the Lorain County Transportation Center, 40 East Ave.

“We do have some availability, but people will have to start walking, and it’s a bad time of the year,” he said.

One thing Cordes said he is not looking forward to is requesting the 80-100 parking passes back from county employees while the upper deck is closed.

“I came up with a list; we’re going to do it by department,” he said. “It’s going to be a percentage of the

passes they currently have.

“We have to take about 25 percent of the passes back. That’s not going to go over very well.”

The garage is not under imminent danger of falling, Cordes said, but Commissioner Ted Kalo pushed for the displaced employees to be informed by Dec. 1.

Cordes said the garage was built around 1972 and the repairs needed to bring the upper deck back into play are estimated at about $2 million and will only tide the county over for about five to eight years.

In the 46 years since the garage was built, Cordes said it has not been maintained properly.

“No matter what we do with it, you can’t make up for that,” he said. “It’s not a house that you can put aluminum siding on it and pretend like the peeling paint doesn’t matter under it.

“You can’t turn back the clock on a lot of the damage to that deck.”

Cordes said the prospect of replacing the garage is a costly prospect.

“I can further tell you that as a rule of thumb of building a new structure, or garage structure, runs $20,000 to $24,000 per parking spot,” he said. “Even if you built (a new one) at a size you have right now, you’d be looking at $8.5 to $9 million.”

Kalo interjected saying that estimate doesn’t account for growth in the county and only maintaining the garage at its current size of 425 spots.

“If the county was going to build a parking garage, I wouldn’t suggest anything less than 600 to 650 spots,” Cordes said. “Even 650 won’t give you 25 years of parking security.”