Structural problems prompt shutdown of Hackensack parking garage

HACKENSACK — An office building parking garage with a cratered steel support beam, corroded metal decking and cracked concrete walls has been closed by the city to avoid a repeat of a 2010 parking garage collapse, officials said.

It was the first time the city wielded new regulations meant to force building owners to maintain their parking structures.

Structural deficiencies that city officials discovered this week at the 5 Summit Avenue garage were similar to those that caused the three-story garage at 300 Prospect Ave. to crumble, city Construction Official Joseph Mellone said Friday.

“Our engineer went up on the back of a pickup truck with a flashlight to see how bad it was, and he put his hand right through the steel beam,” Mellone said. “It was that bad.”

The building manager, however, said the management was addressing what she described as minor issues when the city took over.

“We had an engineer come in and he said there are no unsafe conditions,” said Marjorie Reilly. “We’re baffled. The city shut it down anyway.”

The Summit Avenue building, a two-story office complex built over a two-story garage at the corner of Essex Street, was one of 64 mid-rise, high-rise and commercial complexes the city contacted in the weeks after the Prospect Towers collapse, urging them to submit engineers’ reports outlining the structural integrity of their parking garages before another one collapsed. No one was trapped in the Prospect Towers rubble, but more than 300 residents were displaced.

The Summit Avenue building management replied with a letter from an architect – not the structural engineer the city had requested – asserting that the parking garage was in solid condition and needed only cosmetic repairs.

Reilly said the building was working on the painting and scraping called for in that report and did not hear from the city again for a year.

“We were under the impression that they were satisfied,” she said.

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Structural problems prompt shutdown of Hackensack parking garage