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The future of public parking in Meadville will likely include no downtown parking and the annual loss of the city’s parking fund, which one official called a “social subsidy.”

The possibilities were raised last week at Meadville City Council’s infrastructure subcommittee hearing.

“Basically, it’s just looking bleak,” Councilman Autumn Vogel said of the most recent assessment of the condition of the Market Square garage. The infrastructure subcommittee consists of Vogel and Councilman Jim Rohan, who did not attend the meeting. No official action was taken at the meeting, although Mayor Jaime Kinder and Councilwoman Gretchen Myers were also in attendance as members of the public.

As for the garage restoration, City Planner Peter Grella, who attended the meeting by phone, said: “There is no option that is not very costly.”

It is not yet known how expensive it is. City Manager Marian Menanno said a request for bids for a formal structural analysis of the garage is ready to go out after Wednesday’s meeting.

But an April 2022 letter from Ashley Porter, the city’s consulting engineer, provided an informal estimate of what would be needed to extend the life of the garage.

“As engineers, we can bring this structure back to near end of life or beyond,” Porter wrote, “but this will be a multi-million dollar project.”

The projected costs won’t be a one-time expense either, according to Porter.

“If appropriate annual maintenance is not then budgeted for and performed,” he added in the letter, “the deck will be back to the same shape in about a decade.”

The deck was built in 2003, according to Menanno.

The reason the deck is in the condition it is, of course, is because proper annual maintenance has not been budgeted for over the years.

“In 2018, bus stops were repaired. Our city engineer (Porter) suggested that there should be an ongoing investment every year,” Grella said. “That investment did not happen.”

Porter estimated the cost of the necessary repairs in 2017 at $650,000. The following year, the City Council approved $200,000 for part of the work.

In his updated estimate last year, Porter said that restoring the parking lot would require nearly 100 percent removal and replacement of every level of metal and concrete, and before that could happen, the electrical and gutter systems would have to be removed and later replaced.

Porter described the deck’s structural steel as “in serviceable condition,” but he said secondary steel components such as railings, guardrails and other items will all need to be replaced.

The lack of maintenance exacerbated the inappropriate design for the area, according to Porter.

“You will not find many such people in our region,” he wrote.

Menanno told The Meadville Tribune that one of the design factors is that the decks consist of “a steel pan with concrete poured over it.” When steel pans collect water, it can contribute to concrete deterioration.

By seeking proposals for a formal structural analysis, the city could pay for a more detailed approval of the multimillion-dollar cost of any rehabilitation project. Vogel noted that seeking proposals does not obligate the City Council to make an assessment. Menanno previously estimated the value at $30,000 to $50,000.

Whether the city needs the roughly 275 spaces available when the deck is at full capacity will be addressed by a parking study, which Grella said is in its early stages.

According to recent council discussions, demolishing the deck and replacing it with surface land would result in a net loss of about 220 spaces.

Determining an acceptable level of annual loss to the city’s parking fund will be one of the goals of the parking study, according to Grella, who called such a loss a “social subsidy.”

The city’s 2023 budget calls for a loss of $38,000 in the parking fund, the first such loss since 2020, when the fund lost $88,000.

“Whatever the election ends up being, we always have to expect to lose because of it,” he said, “but that loss of money is in itself what I call a ‘social subsidy’ for the public service of public parking. the great good of the city.”

Vogel approved of the idea.

“By providing parking, even if we don’t make up for all the losses we’ve seen, we’re giving people the ability to park downtown, to shop, to spend their money, businesses to continue to exist,” he said. “We see something for that.”

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