Essex County To Build $23M Parking Deck At Government Complex – Newark, NJ Patch

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — The county is planning to build a 900-car, $23.5 million parking deck at the Essex County Government Complex in Newark, officials announced earlier this week.

According to county officials, the new parking deck will be constructed on the employee parking lot located off of West Market Street in Newark. The structure will have six levels and the side of the deck that faces the Essex County Veterans Courthouse and Essex County LeRoy F. Smith, Jr. Public Safety Building will have a glass façade to make the structure look like an office building.

The West Market Street parking deck will be designated for employee parking. Vehicles will enter the garage via the current driveway adjacent to Essex County Veterans Memorial Park. A second entrance for the surface parking area will be located off of West Market Street across from the Essex County College Athletic Building, officials stated.

Comito Associates from Newark was awarded a professional services contract for $550,000 to design the parking deck and improvements to the remaining surface lot. Terminal Construction from Wood Ridge was awarded a publicly-bid contract for $23,520,000 to perform the construction work. The project is being funded through the Essex County Capital Budget, officials said.

Construction is scheduled to begin in April and be completed in November.

The new parking deck is part of a larger plan to revamp the Essex County Government Complex, officials said. Next month, Essex County is scheduled to purchase two office buildings at 320 and 321 University Avenue, which is the former Bank of America customer service center. This building will be renovated and all the offices that are part of the Division of Family Assistance and Benefits will be consolidated into that location. Currently DFAB offices are housed at 18 Rector Street and the Hall of Records in Newark.

The third part of the project is the construction of a 150,000-square-foot building in the Jurors’ Parking Lot off of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. This new building will house 11 courtrooms for the Essex Vicinage of Superior Court and offices for the County Clerk, Surrogate, Register, Board of Taxation, and Board of Elections, Commissioner of Registration/Superintendent of Elections. When those offices vacate the Hall of Records, the empty spaces will be renovated for new quarters for Landlord-Tenant Court and other county departments, officials said.

“We are always looking for ways to make doing business with Essex County easier, more user friendly and simpler to navigate,” Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. said. “The construction of the parking deck is the first of several phases that will expand our parking and office space to provide better conditions for our employees and people visiting the complex.”

DiVincenzo added that the Aaa bond rating the county earned last year is helping to get “some of the lowest interest rates to fund this project.”

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