Dearborn asks owner of damaged parking garage to assess building
Dearborn — Dearborn officials still don’t know what caused a parking structure to partially collapse last week and have asked the structure’s owner to do an assessment as city leaders start the legal process to possibly demolish the building.
Hassan Abbas, senior press secretary for the city of Dearborn, said the city has begun “legal steps under state law” for the privately-owned structure on Garrison Place, including seeking demolition due to “the dangerous conditions.”
Part of the street level-floor of the parking structure caved in Feb. 6, hitting a car parked below it. The car’s occupant wasn’t injured, according to Dearborn’s fire chief.
Abbas said that the city has requested the owner of the property conduct a structural engineering analysis to assess the building’s status as well as the circumstances that may have led to the partial collapse at the site. He said the city doesn’t know what caused the collapse.
The owner of the property is GJ Ramz Acquisition LLC, according to property records. A spokesperson for the property owner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Abbas noted that that the city has fenced off the property to prohibit access to the parking structure, which is just off of West Outer Drive.
“The property owner was instructed to immediately stabilize the deck to prevent further damage,” he stated. “If stabilization is successful and the structure is deemed safe, the owner is responsible for coordinating the safe removal of vehicles.”
Before the Feb. 6 collapse, the structure’s owners were issued a stop-work order and ticketed in July for unpermitted work, according to Abbas. Plans that the owners submitted in late October were denied because they “failed to provide necessary details on the work’s scope and a structural analysis,” he said.
“There have been no other events to trigger an inspection of the parking structure prior to this stop-work order,” Abbas stated. “The attached building suffered a fire in 2021 but has remained vacant and uninhabited since then, thus nullifying the need for an interval inspection.”
Fire Chief Joseph Murray previously said thousands of pounds of concrete rained down in the collapse.
The man in the garage was able to walk to a stretcher after firefighters from the Western Wayne County mutual aid team pulled him from his car, and it appears he was unharmed, but Murray said he was taken to a hospital as a precaution in case he he had suffered any injuries that adrenaline may have prevented him from noticing.
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