Partial ‘collapse’ of parking garage could cost Baltimore $7M to fix
Part of the parking garage at the Baltimore Police Department’s headquarters collapsed last August and officials say it requires emergency repairs.
Baltimore’s spending board is being asked to approve a $6.8 million emergency contract for repairs to the police parking garage, which has been closed since shortly after the damage occurred, a Board of Estimates agenda shows.
The agenda item describes a collapse last summer on the second and third floors of the garage on East Fayette Street downtown, requiring “immediate emergency solutions” to prevent further damage and other safety hazards.
“It is not possible to predict which damaged areas will fail, when they fail, what will make them fail, and to what degree,” according to a summary of an inspection report on the garage by the city’s Department of General Services.
Restoration East was the lowest responsive bidder for the emergency repair work, the agenda said. The $6,838,000 contract runs from Feb. 14 through Feb. 12, 2025.
John Riggin, a General Services spokesman, said demolition and repairs to “failed” concrete have begun already.
General Services Director Berke Attila said in October that the garage was in “urgent need for extensive repairs” in a memo to the Department of Finance seeking emergency funding. Attila wrote that a capital project meant to reinforce concrete and address moisture infiltration in the garage was in its design phase when the second and third floors of the garage “suffered a collapse” on Aug. 24.
According to Attila’s memo, which was attached to a repair contract provided by the Baltimore City Comptroller’s Office, a team of engineers with General Services assessed the damage and concluded it required immediate action.
“Time is of the essence in repairing the police headquarters garage,” Attila wrote.
Riggin provided an inspection report summary from September 2023 that says police department employees reported Aug. 24 that “a slab section of the decking surface had failed and fallen,” resulting in a fourthlevel hole about a foot wide and three feet long.
The report described the potential for “localized failures” in the garage, particularly on lower floors. It recommended the garage no longer be used.
Riggin said in an email both the summary report and director’s memo were using different words to describe the same damage. He said the section of slab decking fell from underneath the fourth level, which is the third floor, through the third level, creating the hole. The director’s memo, he said, “describes the same damage in broader terms to emphasize the project’s level of urgency.”
He said the September report was the most recent on the police headquarters’ parking garage. In it, engineers noted that “conditions at the garage continue to worsen.”
Police spokeswoman Amanda Krotki said the department didn’t sustain any property damage when asked whether any squad cars or other vehicles were affected by the collapse.