John Bays On Wall Collapse: 'How The Hell Could That Happen?'

JOLIET, IL — Joliet businessman John Bays told Joliet Patch on Friday that he plans to devote his full attention to repairing his private parking deck at the Bays Executive Centre or tearing it down. On Thursday night, a section of concrete, 40 to 5o feet long, fell to the ground, causing a major disruption for Joliet's downtown.

Nobody was injured, but one pickup truck was damaged by the concrete's collapse.

Bays was on the scene, along with Joliet police, for several hours on Thursday night. He had a crew of more than 20 guys back at the parking deck at 5:30 a.m. Friday. He expected to have the entire parking deck debris removed, and the area reopened by early afternoon.

Bays said he will have to wait for direction from Joliet's building and inspections staff on whether he can move forward with repairing his private parking deck or tearing it down.

"I will take care of whatever the problem is," Bays told Joliet Patch. "I will fix it or tear it down. I would never have dreamed that that would happen. "

Bays said the private deck along Scott and Clinton Streets can park 166 vehicles. He said that he had been making a number of repairs to the property, spending $80,000 to install a new drainage system "because water was leaking through the first floor.

"I don't care what anybody says, I was working on the deck," Bays remarked.

He believes that salt had been getting inside the concrete wall that collapsed. The deterioration may have been happening very slowly, he said.

"The rebar holding the wall rotted up, but how the hell could that happen?" he asked. "It's a deck that's probably 50 years old. I had planned on rebuilding the whole deck. I've never seen nothing like that in my life."

In addition to owning the private deck for his Bays Executive Centre, Bays also acquired ownership of the city of Joliet's Scott Street public parking deck last summer.

The city sold its parking deck to Bays last summer with the expectation that Bays would upgrade the technology and make improvements to the deck out of his pocket, rather than at the expense of Joliet's taxpayers.