Milwaukee parking garages deemed safe

Listen to this article

By James Briggs

One year after a panel collapsed from the Milwaukee County-owned O’Donnell Park parking garage, killing a teenager, Milwaukee’s city-owned parking structures pose no threat to the public, officials said.

The city has completed a facilities condition assessment of its five parking garages, concluding Milwaukee must spend $40.7 million over the next 20 years to maintain the structures.

The good news, though, said Venu Gupta, the city’s buildings superintendent, is that all of the parking garages scored in good condition, according to the city’s rating system.

“All of our facilities are safe,” he said. “That’s the first thing we want to ensure the public and the citizens.”

Also, Gupta said, the city has maintained the structures so well that he doesn’t think there will be a need for any large repair or reconstruction projects during the next 20 years.

“There are no major deferred maintenance issues with any of these five structures — nothing around the corner,” he said.

But Milwaukee Alderman Joe Dudzik said he worried the visual inspections completed during the process could have overlooked cracks or other problems beneath the surface.

“We don’t really take any of these facilities apart. We strictly do a walk-around, look-see kind of thing,” he said.

In the aftermath of the O’Donnell incident, Dudzik said, “I wonder if something as simple as a column that’s been hit, perhaps by a poor driver, if that would really raise a red flag that maybe we should take a look at that column more closely.

“I realize that’s going to take some cost into the fray a little bit, but I think in the long run, the county’s got to be looking at an awful chunk of change to pay for the loss of that young man’s life.”

Gupta, though, said inspectors were sensitive to new signs of damage.

“One of the things our engineers do is actually look for any cracks,” he said. “Quite a bit of time is spent … and if they notice any new crack, or notice somebody directly hit a panel or column, they call us and we investigate.”

The city has doubled down on its inspections since last July, Gupta said.

“After the O’Donnell incident, the mayor (Tom Barrett) asked us that we conduct a thorough safety inspection of all parking structures,” he said.

When the city found at-risk panels, Gupta said, “we were already proactive in removing any such panels. We were already on that path earlier than when we did the (most recent) inspections.”

The only parking garage that had architectural panels similar to those of the O’Donnell structure was the MacArthur Square garage at 841 N. James Lovell St. The city began slowly removing the 150 or so panels in 2009, Gupta said, but sped up the process after the O’Donnell incident. The city removed about 100 of them within a few days of the accident.

“Our people found some of those panels were starting to show some deterioration,” Gupta said. “When this incident happened, we didn’t want to take any chance for the future. We knew the panels, little-by-little, would start deteriorating.”

Cindy Angelos, the city’s parking financial manager, said Milwaukee had spent about $1 million in capital preventive maintenance since 2000 for city-owned parking garages.

“We’ve done a tremendous amount of maintenance,” Angelos said. “Prior to that, I wouldn’t necessarily say our garages were in the best shape, but we’ve maintained them much better.”

Dudzik, though, questioned whether the city has invested enough money to ensure the structural integrity of the parking garages.

“A million (dollars) is a lot of money, but if you look at the size of structures and ages of them, a million isn’t a lot,” he said.

Dudzik said he trusted the city’s staff-conducted thorough inspections, but said he worried about all the things that could go wrong with a parking garage.

“I was stunned at how fast things like rebar and things like tie rods can rust away and it just takes a crack, and I don’t think you get a sense for how that crack has jeopardized or significantly compromised the structure,” Dudzik said. “I appreciate the fact that we look at cracks. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t do a little more.”

More on O’Donnell Park

• Milwaukee County transfers buildings to museum
• Court upholds $39M verdict in O’Donnell Park parking garage death
• Transit Center skywalk to come down this weekend
• Milwaukee County Board to consider selling O’Donnell Park to museum
• Milwaukee Art Museum to make offer on O’Donnell Park
• Budget change would undo some of County Board’s loss of land sales power
• Resolution would strip Milwaukee County Board’s control of O’Donnell Park (UPDATE)
• Milwaukee Art Museum may acquire O’Donnell Park
• O’Donnell Park debate raises RFP, legal questions
• County delays action on O’Donnell Park resolutions