Houghton’s Council Starts Talking About Maintenance Needs for the Shelden Avenue Garage

Houghton City Council has opened discussions about the state of the city center’s garage, nearby subway, and AT&T on Shelden Avenue. Recently Houghton had a structural study conducted on the structure to determine the extent of repairs necessary. The 100-year-old or so structure was the site of a Ford dealership, before becoming the site of an UPPCO garage. Sometime around the 1980’s the city came into possession of the parking structure after UPPCO moved locations from downtown. City manager Eric Waara says that the parking deck portion of the parking area has been kept up, however, the garage section needs to have a decision made on what to do soon.

“Now it did not include the parking deck it only mentioned the deck behind the garage. Because that’s of a newer vintage different style of construction and that’s been maintained a couple of times already and is actually in fairly good shape. So I guess I just wanted to get the council’s thoughts on this because the city council is going to have to come to a decision. There was a maintenance plan recommended by the engineers if it was a choice to keep it. And it’s about $2 million over 10 years of maintenance items on that garage. Some of that work is worth about $300,000 of that, and it should be done fairly soon.” – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton

Waara stated that the city finds itself in a similar position as the big deck that was torn down, but on a much smaller scale. Houghton will seek to save as many parking spots at the site as possible no matter what decision the council makes. The council will continue its discussion about options into August before making any decisions.