OK, the color is officially aqua, although some people I know are calling it the baby blue parking garage.

And it's not the entire exterior of New London's Water Street parking garage that's being painted, just the vertical posts that hold up the horizontal parking decks.

Still, it's a lot of concrete that will soon be blue.

I asked Joseph Celli, who manages the city-owned garage for Pro Park, about the new paint job, and he filled me in on some of the details of the project that pretty soon will change the face - at least the color of a large part of it - of the downtown.

Not only is the city painting the exterior of the garage, but it will soon also be trimming the maple and oak trees in front, so that people will have a better view of it, from downtown, from the river, or just passing through by car or train.

The new color scheme is aqua, the baby-blue-like blue that is appearing on the concrete columns facing Water Street, and sand, a beige color that has also been applied on parts of the horizontal decking on the same side.

The sand color is similar in shading to the natural concrete, and from a distance the side of the garage that has been painted now reads generally blue, the predominant color.

Celli said the color choices for the paint, a thick specially formulated chemical meant to protect the concrete from water, were limited. The final color choice of sand and aqua was made by the city's Parking Commission.

So far, only one coat of the blue and sand colors has been applied to parts of the Water Street side of the garage. That side and the side facing the new Parade are scheduled to be done before Thanksgiving, with two coats.

The rest of the exterior of the garage will be painted with two coats in the spring, when the weather improves.

The exterior painting is part of a $135,000 project that also included repairing parts of the exterior concrete support columns and power washing the entire garage, cleaning off years of mold and grime.

The City Council has also approved another $640,000 project, yet to get under way, that will repair and restore much of the interior of the garage, making cosmetic and structural improvements.

All the work is part of a relatively new system of using revenues from the garage to finance maintenance and improvements, as called for in the original agreement from when structure was built 30 years ago with state and federal money.

The city, for many years, ignored the agreement and put revenues instead directly into the general fund.

The busy garage, with its 940 spaces, runs close to capacity in the summer months, Celli said, and annual revenues are more than half a million dollars. The replacement cost of the building would be $21 million to $24 million, based on parking garage cost projections, Celli said.

In recent years, new marketing efforts, signage and improvements have increased profits at the Water Street garage, Celli said. Monthly profits this year have run from $7,785 in January to $32,468 in June, he said.

Given the positive numbers, it sounds like maybe they picked the right color for the garage with blue.

At least it's one of the things in the city that doesn't run in the red.

This is the opinion of David Collins.