Former DOJ building coming down for new four-story legislative parking garage downtown

Excavators have started preparing the former Department of Justice building in downtown Concord to be demolished to make way for a four-story legislative parking garage at the site.

Plans detail a 409-space garage filling an entire city block. The property, one block from Main Street, sits between the State House, the Legislative Office Building, Concord City Hall, Concord Police Headquarters, the State House Annex and the First Church of Christ Scientist.

The remaining building at 33 Capitol Street is being cleared by construction crews ahead of its demolition. The Department of Justice, which housed the Attorney General’s Office, relocated last year less than a mile north to 1 Granite Place South, the former property of Lincoln Financial.

Lawmakers pushed hard for a new place to park, complaining that their current assigned garage over Storrs Street was in dangerous disrepair. The Storrs Street garage and the smaller one attached to the Legislative Office Building also are not big enough for the largest state legislature in the country at 424 members. Parking spaces on the street are routinely reserved for legislators when the General Court is in session.

Lawmakers approved $25 million last year to raze both the old garage and the Department of Justice building and construct the new garage.

A public hearing will be held on the new garage plans before the Concord Planning Board in February.