The groundwork for the city's ultimate decision to sell the Gov. Winthrop parking garage in 2006 to William Cornish, then a sitting city councilor, was laid with a series of condemning engineering reports about its condition.

The most alarming of those engineering studies, done in 2001 by Desman Associates of Farmington, included extensive chemical tests of the corroding concrete.

"Continued deterioration and eventual catastrophic structural failure can be expected unless steps are taken immediately ... " was the takeaway headline from that report.

The report said then, 15 years ago, that just phase 1 priority repairs would cost about $2.3 million.

It not only said a collapse was possible but it concluded many of the side concrete guardrails no longer were capable of stopping a car from going through them.

Well, of course, this being New London, none of the recommended steps was taken immediately. Nothing at all was done.

Eventually, some five years later, city councilors bought into fellow councilor Cornish's promises that he would take care of it, and they agreed to sell him the garage for $206,000.

The contract has a reverter clause that says the city can take the building back if Cornish does not keep it available for public parking and keep it maintained in "reasonably good, clean and safe" condition.

It would be hard for him to argue that he has, and I believe the city should take back this important but sadly neglected downtown asset.

But there doesn't seem to be much political will to hold this politically active property owner accountable.

Curiously, the damning 2001 report by Desman Associates somehow disappeared completely from city files. I only recently obtained a copy because I suggested to city officials, who could only hold out empty hands when I asked for it, that they get a new copy from Desman.

They did, and it's back in city files.

Also now in city files is a spanking new engineering report of the garage, this one by e2 engineers of New London, hired by Cornish. They are the same engineers he hired to assess the condition of his burned-out building on State Street.

Cornish was asked, after I wrote about the condition of the garage Sept. 10, to get an engineering study and to retroactively apply for building permits that were never obtained for work he did replacing wooden support columns with metal ones.

This seemed to me at the time an unsatisfactory solution, asking the building owner to come up with his own structural condition report, especially when the city's own engineering study concluded 15 years ago that the building was in danger of catastrophic failure.

Shouldn't there be a new independent analysis?

I checked with the state building official last week when I heard someone had filed a complaint with him about the condition of the New London garage.

His office reported back that indeed an anonymous complaint had been filed, but they were not following up on it because they checked with the city building official who told them an "independent" structural analysis was being done.

I'm sorry. Maybe I am missing something here. But how can a study commissioned, supervised and paid for by the building owner in question be in any way independent?

I am no engineer, so I can't really judge the quality of the report Cornish's engineer submitted.

It does sound some alarms about structural decay. But when it starts recommending solutions like new concrete patching, I couldn't help but think of the discarded bags of half-used concrete mix bags I noticed in one dark mildewed corner of the garage, which is anything but "clean and safe."

How can the 2016 report be so different from the 2001 study that concluded millions of dollars in immediate repairs needed to start, way back then, with the corroding top deck?

Cornish has told the city, by way of the latest building permits, he has spent less than $100,000 on the garage.

The new report doesn't even include any chemical analysis.

As the 2001 report noted, no one will know precisely how bad it is until you open up the leaking and corroded supports and decking and see what's happened to the steel inside.

The postal service last month, when reading about the sad state of the garage, took immediate action and moved their employees who park there to the safety of the city's garage on Water Street.

It's too bad the city doesn't take as seriously the safety of the other parkers, some of them elderly, who still use the Gov. Winthrop garage.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com