The city-owned Market Street Parking Garage will get some preventive maintenance this spring and summer, as the Charlottesville Department of Public Works has awarded a $430,644 contract to a James City County firm to perform waterproofing work on all four public levels of parking.
“It gets progressively more work toward the top deck,” project manager Stewart Harding told The Daily Progress. “That’s where it’s most exposed to the elements.”
The project, whose technical specifications require as many as 100 empty spaces to remain open during the five-month work period, may not disrupt parkers, since the pandemic took a bite out of traffic beginning in 2020.
“Since COVID, that parking deck has been used a lot less, and quite often that top deck has been empty,” Harding said.
The multiuse structure consumes an entire city block between Main, Market, Fifth and Sixth streets next door to City Hall.
Winning bidder Eastern Waterproofing & Restoration of Virginia LLC beat out nine other applying contractors for the work when it won the job on January 31. The Toano-based firm has agreed to repair spalled and delaminated areas of concrete, inject epoxy into cracks, install 2,160 linear feet of joint sealant, install a sealer and corrosion inhibitor on interior column faces, and apply a waterproof coating plus four supplemental drains into that usually empty top level.
Harding said the garage has been repaired about every five to eight years and that the city routinely works with engineers to issue guidelines for preventive maintenance. Here, structural engineer Adam Cochran of Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc. has put together a 141-page specifications guide.
“The purpose of this project is to maintain the integrity of this building – really all our buildings – and extend its life,” said Harding.
He said he expects the work to begin by the end of March and wrap by the end of August.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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