Downtown Wheaton parking garages undergo repairs

Two city-owned parking garages in downtown Wheaton will remain open during repairs that take place every five years.

But the city will temporarily close some parking spaces as crews make fixes recommended in a structural assessment of the Willow Avenue and Wheaton Place garages.

As part of the project expected to start this week, workers will patch concrete surfaces, paint structural steel, re-stripe parking spots and repair masonry and floor cracks. In each garage, one guardrail that was damaged by a plow also will be repaired at a cost to the city's snow removal contractor.

The bulk of the work will focus on the Willow Avenue garage at 220 S. Cross St. That deck was built with precast or pre-assembled concrete. Sealants for control joints in the concrete eventually wear away and need to be replaced, said Al Schefske, Wheaton's facilities manager.

The city hired Western Specialty Contractors for the repairs and maintenance work. The Chicago-based company submitted a $214,000 bid.

Crews are scheduled to wrap up the job by the end of September before the city begins to replace deteriorating water mains under a segment of Front Street later in the fall as part of the first stage of a downtown streetscape project.

"I'd like to have the parking garage available for anybody that would be displaced during that construction," Schefske said.

During the repairs, permit holders still cannot park in spaces reserved for customers of downtown businesses.

The city in February converted about 150 time-restricted slots in the lower level of the Wheaton Place garage to customer-only spaces. After talks with the Downtown Business Association and enforcement officers, the city made the shift to encourage employees in the central business district to use leased spaces in the garage at 232 W. Wesley St.

A structural expert will next examine the parking garages in four years.