Garage at Cal U. to remain closed
CALIFORNIA – A $12 million parking garage will remain closed this semester at California University of Pennsylvania after a large section of concrete fell onto the first floor of the 6-year-old structure in August.
The university is awaiting a final report on the structural integrity of the five-story Vulcan Garage from an outside engineering firm before deciding if the building can be repaired or if it needs to be demolished, said Kenn Marshall, spokesman for the State System of Higher Education.
“We’re keeping an eye on it,” Marshall said Wednesday.
The garage was cited in an investigative report into mounting debts at Cal U. in advance of the 2012 firing of then-university president Angelo Armenti Jr., who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remodel the campus. Armenti sued the state system, its board of governors and members of the faculty over his firing in federal court, a case that was dismissed in November by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, court records show.
The case wasn’t argued on the merits of the investigative report, but rather on the evidence Armenti put forth in his lawsuit, State System attorney Sam Simon said.
Armenti’s lawsuit involved counts including alleged First Amendment retaliation and the State System’s failure to schedule a hearing to give him an opportunity to clear his name.
He has appealed Jones’ dismissal of his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. His attorney, Alan B. Epstein, could not be reached Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Michael Baker International engineering firm of Pittsburgh performed an evaluation of the garage and recommended a “deeper dive into the root cause of the failure of the decking” on the second floor, Cal U. said on its website.
Simon said there weren’t any concrete reinforcement steel rods in the concrete that fell, something that appears to be verified by photos of the damage before the concrete was removed.
“I don’t know if that is a requirement. I’m not an engineer,” Cal U. spokeswoman Christine Kindl said Thursday.
Cal U. owes $14,527,375 to pay off its $20 million portion of a bond that was financed for the garage and other parking improvements on campus, Marshall said.
The general contractor for the garage’s construction was Manheim Corp. of Pittsburgh, said Sara Goulet, spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor and Industry. The company did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.
Kindl said there were various suppliers and companies that worked on the project, and that she was unable to identify them.
No one was injured and no vehicles were damaged when the section of the flooring failed Aug. 26, she said.