The Terrapin Trail garage will be shut down from June 10 and reopen at the start of the fall 2012 semester while it undergoes a $1 million renovation.
To prevent minor trouble spots in the Terrapin Trail garage from escalating into serious maintenance issues, the garage will be shut down and undergo a $1 million renovation this summer.
Facilities Management officials will begin the project on the six-floor garage June 10 and are slated to complete the renovations when the fall semester begins, displacing hundreds of students from their parking spots on the campus. The crews will replace caulk joints, work on structural repairs and re-paint parking spaces throughout the garage, according to Bill Olen, Facilities Management capital projects director.
Although the repairs will result in minor inconveniences this summer, Olen said fixing smaller problems on a regular basis will prevent glaring maintenance problems in the future that require immediate attention — and more money.
“The preventative maintenance is scheduled to help [prevent] minor concerns [from] becoming larger issues with the hope that spending a little money on a regular basis will extend the duration before major renovation work will have to be performed,” Olen said.
The Department of Transportation Services is funding the project through funds allocated for maintenance repairs, said DOTS Assistant Director Beverly Malone.
“This project is 100 percent funded by DOTS,” Malone said. “The renovations are standard preventative maintenance, and we budget for the expense.”
Some students who routinely park in the garage said the plan to eliminate access to the entire garage at once is inconvenient.
“They should just shut down the half they’re working on, then switch and shut down the other half,” said freshman biology major Tony Dinh. “It’s not fair that they’d just shut us down.”
Other students, such as junior biology major Jake Bodart, said because garage permit holders can park in 10 other lots while the garage is closed, the repairs won’t be too cumbersome.
“You can park wherever you want if you have a permit,” Bodart said. “It’d be better for them because they’re closer to campus [than] if they parked somewhere else.”
Freshman computer engineering major Benjamin Palfi instead sees the repairs as a necessity and said a small inconvenience is worth keeping the garage structurally sound.
“If they need to shut it down to fix something, that’s fine,” Palfi said. “It’s better than it breaking apart.”
foley@umdbk.com
