Off limits for total eclipse: Top floors of Bloomington parking garages
On April 8, the day of the total solar eclipse, the city of Bloomington’s four parking garages will be operating, but there will be no access for cars or people to the top floors.
Restricted top-floor parking garage access was a point of emphasis from Bloomington’s director of public works Adam Wason at the Tuesday night meeting of the board of public works.
Wason said, “We’ll be restricting that access for all kinds of reasons.”
Responding to a B Square question, Wason said the reasons include the fact that public works staff does not have the capacity for management of big events that could occur, if access to the top floors were allowed.
There are public safety concerns anytime there’s a large congregation of people in one place, Wason said, adding that there are myriad other places where people can get a good view of the eclipse.
Also a consideration, Wason said, are the structural loads for which parking garages are designed.
Wason pointed to a 2013 article from the International Parking Institute, which concluded that, “Obviously, parking garages generally are inadequate as venues for people-gathering events when viewed from a structural, fire protection, and exit capacity perspective. Typically, parking garages are for the storage of passenger vehicles, not parties.”
Although a person is lighter than a car, the kinds of crowds that could gather on top of a parking garage could easily exceed the weight of cars, even if a car were parked in every space on the top floor.
The Morton Street garage has 72 parking spaces on its top floor. Based on a 2022 study by the Environmental Protection Agency, the average weight of a new car in the United States is 4,289 pounds. That works out to 308,808 pounds if every parking space were filled.
Measured by GoogleEarth, the top floor of the Morton Street garage covers 21,357 square feet. Based on a review by the Poynter Institute, a tightly packed crowd would fill 4.5 square feet per person. That works out to about 4,746 people.
Using 180 pounds as an average weight for a person, that works out to 854,280 pounds, which is nearly three times the weight from parking the top floor full with cars.
The load on a structure due to a crowd of people is dynamic, which changes in magnitude and direction, which causes additional stresses.
The idea that a crowd of people can push a parking garage to its structural limits could jog the memory of some Bloomington residents, who recall Hoosierfest in September 1989. The opening paragraph of a front-page Herald-Times article on Sept. 8 reads: “Music fans tax garage limits.”
Here’s the opening paragraph of the article:
Thursday’s Hoosierfest headline concert by the BoDeans musical group was interrupted twice when city officials became concerned that crowd movement could damage or possibly collapse the city parking garage on which the concert was being held.
The venue for the BoDeans concert was the Regester Center garage, which was a shorter structure than the Morton Street garage, which now stands at roughly the same location, after the Regester garage was demolished.
Parking garages got some additional airtime during Tuesday night’s board of public works meeting, as part of the business handled by the board.
Two contracts were approved with Kone, Inc. for the replacement of two elevators in city parking garages: one in the 7th & Morton garage ($367,000) and the other at the Walnut Street garage ($184,550).
The funding for the parking garage elevator repairs came from a nearly $20-million add-on to the 2024 budget put forward by the Hamilton administration last year. The money was drawn from the economic development local income tax (ED LIT) as well as money that was formerly in the CRED (Community Revitalization Enhancement District) fund.
The elevator in the Morton Street garage has been frequently down for repairs, sometimes due to vandalism. Wason said at Tuesday’s meeting that the new cab will have video cameras. Wason said the cameras would allow staff to “observe any unruly behavior that may lead to future maintenance issues for us.”
Parking garages manager Jess Goodman told the board at their Monday preview of the agenda that the Morton Street garage elevator replacement would not start until the week after Indiana University’s graduation (May 3), and is not expected to be complete until October.
The elevator is a 2002 model that has been discontinued, and it’s hard to find parts for it, Goodman said. During the work, the public works department will be providing rides to their cars for guests of the Hilton Garden Inn, which has reserved spaces in the garage.
The Walnut Street garage, at 7th Street, is not getting a brand new cab, but will have everything upgraded Goodman said. It will be getting a new power unit, new doors, new seals and new light fixtures. The Walnut Street garage elevator will be down from May until August, Goodman said.
