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Parking Garage Rehab Awaits Additional Funding
Mayor: Reopening facility will enhance efforts to attract new businesses, activity
By Jason Togyer
The Tube City Almanac
March 08, 2022
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News
City officials estimate that repairs to the Lysle Boulevard parking garage, closed since 1999, will cost about $900,000 more than previously believed. (Tube City Almanac file photo)
The rehabilitation of the Lysle Boulevard parking garage is temporarily on hold while McKeesport seeks additional funding for the project, city officials said.
City council has approved an application to the Commonwealth Financing Authority for $1 million to pay for masonry and concrete work, painting, drainage improvements and other repairs on the facility at the corner of Lysle and Locust streets.
The garage, built in 1959, has a capacity for more than 400 cars, but has been closed to the public since 1999, when pieces of its concrete decks began crumbling. The garage has been used for storage since then.
In 2018, McKeesport was awarded a $2.9 million multi-modal transportation grant from PennDOT to rehabilitate the garage and re-route a portion of the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail off of surface roads in the Downtown area.
At the time, city officials had estimated that rehabilitating the garage would cost $500,000 to $1 million and allocated $600,000 of the PennDOT grant toward the project.
“The parking garage estimates came in much higher than we anticipated,” Cherepko said last week. “A lot of that is due to the delays caused by COVID-19, a lot of that is due to the condition of the garage, and the cost of materials has gone up.”
The most recent estimate for returning the garage to service is approximately $1.5 million, he said.
The bulk of the PennDOT grant was supposed to be used to re-route the bike trail, Cherepko said. That project is proceeding but city officials are negotiating rights-of-way with the affected property owners.
Cherepko said he has heard the complaint that renovating the Lysle Boulevard garage is a “waste of money.”
But, he said, the city is working to remove blight and attract new businesses to the Fifth Avenue and Lysle Boulevard corridors.
Along with the reopening of the Executive Building and the renovation of the nearby McKeesport Transportation Center, Cherepko said, having the parking garage will be an important marketing tool for the city’s efforts to bring new activity Downtown.
He called it “a good problem to have.”
“There is a lot going on right now,” Cherepko said.
Originally published March 08, 2022.
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