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The Parking Deck Subcommittee agreed unanimously to a motion at Tuesday’s meeting recommending that the aging downtown Houghton structure be taken down. That suggestion will have to go before the planning commission as a whole and then the city council before demolition preparation could begin.
The move leaves many questions unanswered, but will create momentum to reach a fixed end goal. The members chose to make the recommendation by itself, without a firm plan for what comes next. The hope is that the public will offer input in the coming months so that two solutions can be found on parallel tracks. The first is financing the tear down and coordinating logistics of such an effort. The second would be the deck’s replacement.
Chairman Tom Merz says he trusts that will happen.
City Manager Eric Waara, a member of the subcommittee, came to the meeting with four buckets filled with concrete chunks that had fallen from the structure.
He put a handful on the table, but didn’t have to do more. Member Mike Needham was the first to compare the structure to the condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida. Merz says acknowledging the similarities is unavoidable.
The Houghton Planning Commission meets again on July 27th.
