Wisconsin lawmakers want parking structure inspections after collapse

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Lawmakers are making a bipartisan proposal to require owners to inspect parking structures every five years or else face fines, following a parking garage’s partial collapse at the Bayshore Town Center in Glendale one year ago.

In February 2023, part of the third floor of a parking garage at Bayshore collapsed after heavy snow, which crushed several cars and stranded dozens of peoples’ vehicles for days. No one was hurt, but the incident stirred reminders of a 2010 incident where a panel fell off a garage outside Summerfest and killed a 15-year-old and injured two others.

“This bill is about public safety,” said state Rep. Darrin Madison, who represents parts of north Milwaukee, Shorewood and Glendale. “When architects and engineers design and build buildings, the public is placing a level of trust in their expertise, and what these situations where structures are falling down presents a wavering of that trust. It’s not based off the folks that initially designed it because these structures work. But if owners aren’t doing due diligence in making sure maintenance happens, it puts us all at risk,” he added.

Madison, state Sen. Chris Larson, state Rep. Bob Donovan and state Rep. Dave Maxey drafted the rules to require parking structure owners to work with engineers and inspect their garages every five years; bridges across the state are inspected every two to four years. They hope to have the proposal numbered and voted on before the end of the legislative session next month.

Under state law, parking structures are considered public buildings and governed by the Wisconsin building code. Currently, there are no state rules that require parking structure inspections.

According to the bill text, owners must submit their inspection reports to their local municipality or to the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS). If an owner doesn’t inspect their garage after five years, they have six months to do so until they face a $200 fine each month a structure is left unexamined. If there are no inspections after a year, the DSPS will close the structure and deem it unsafe for use.

The legislation also offers a layer of flexibility for what type of tests owners want to run on their structures, Madison said. Certain tests are done every five years, while others are done every 30 years.

Bryan Kennedy, mayor of Glendale, was one of the first people to help shape the proposal. Lawmakers also talked to engineers in Milwaukee and Green Bay.

“A parking structure is not the same as a building. You build an office building or a school … you don’t have additional weight and movement you have in a parking structure. This periodic inspection gives people peace of mind knowing they’re going into a structure that was passed by a structural engineer,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the proposal was good for municipalities that don’t have the capacity to take on more inspections.

“Part of what I recommended is, don’t saddle the municipality with one more duty (the state) is not giving us extra funding for. I recommended they have owners of parking structures utilize a third-party structural engineer to examine the structure and produce a report that it’s sound. If it’s not sound, they should give recommendations for what needs to be fixed,” Kennedy said.

According to Kennedy, who was elected mayor of Glendale in 2015, the legislation is an addition to Wisconsin’s history of establishing building code standards.

“Even before there were universal building codes, Wisconsin had its own standards. It seems fitting the state would now require periodic inspection of parking garages,” he said. “It fits our history of expecting high quality in construction materials and quality of construction.”