Meet the new bosses

Commuters seek answers to decrepit garage from new state leaders

— It is a new year with new governor, but the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council is seeking answers to old questions.

For one, they want to know why the cement ceiling in the train station’s old garage is still held together with plywood.

The council, which holds monthly meetings around the state, held its January meeting this week in the Stamford Transportation Center. Before the session started, council members spent 30 minutes in the center’s parking structure, largely on a garage-deterioration tour led by city resident and council Vice Chairman Jeffrey Maron.

He pushed for the garage tour hoping the

state Department of Transportation, soon to be under new leadership, changes its approach to the garage, which he said has been left to crumble.

The oldest portion of the structure, the 727 spaces built closest to the station’s center in the mid 1980s, is in such disrepair that only some 200 spots remain usable. A DOT representative comes to every meeting, Maron said, but the department never agrees to a garage tour.

“They don’t want to see what they don’t want to see,” he said.

So the garage’s oldest portion had a long-awaited moment in the spotlight, with two city representatives, a state representative, state contractors, subcontractors and DOT Assistant Rail Adminiswith

trator Richard Jankovich in tow.

To the uninitiated, the garage seems in middling condition — albeit difficult to navigate — on the first floor. But a trip up one level, on a staircase with each step seemingly missing a piece of its steel toecap, reveals a different story.

On the second and third floors, only a walking path remains as fences on either side block off the bulk of the garage’s open space. But the blocked off spots are just one garage woe commuters bemoan.

Overhead, a plywood patchwork keeps cement pieces from falling on commuters’ cars — or heads. The plywood fixes were part of a $1.5 million 2015 stopgap after falling concrete sparked immediate work.

Lackluster parking enforcement, largely because policing the garage is an open legal question —

the city, state and the contractor who manages the garage all playing a roll — is also a problem, commuters say. There are stop signs that few heed and spots routinely lost to two-spot parkers with little regard to dividing lines.

Rampant sideswipping in the garage’s tight spaces is such a problem on upper floors throughout the structure that city Rep. Bradley Michelson, R-1, said he’ll only park in the less desired basement on his daily commute.

The Department of Transportation is making some fixes, although not as many as commuters want.

Jankovich and contractors used part of the tour to talk about coming work on the roof to replace joints between concrete panels and seal it with protective coating. That work should come in the spring, on the newest portion of the garage, the 1,200-spot “L” wrapping around the original building.

The state this fall unveiled a plan to build another 960-spot garage on South State Street that will replace lost spots in the existing garage. That is scheduled to open in 2021.

Still the biggest question for commuters is what will come of the current garage in the intervening years and after.

Maron said he’d like to see measures taken to prevent further crumbling on either the original portion or the 1,200-spot addition, which he fears could become the

next decrepit garage if not cared for.

Many wonder if, and when, the 727-spot original garage — which the state in 2006 said was broken beyond repair — will be razed.

If it is torn down, commuters want another built on the site. The state could push to see the land developed for other uses. Officials in the past administration had plans for a developer to turn the site into a highrise with hotel, apartment and office space.

The DOT currently isn’t saying what will come of the old garage. A spokesman told The Advocate in November that the department doesn’t have answers.

The old garage “seems like the elephant in the room,” Michelson said this week.

The Department of Transportation is making some fixes, although not as many as commuters want.