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Parking deck beam collapses at prominent Lake Norman community. Are shoppers safe?

A 34,000-pound boom lift used by painters collapsed a beam in a parking deck at the Langtree at the Lake mixed-use community on Lake Norman recently, but there’s no threat to shoppers and retailers, an Iredell County official said Tuesday.

Workers made repairs, “and the parking deck is fine,” Bradley Nicholson, manager of the Iredell County Building Standards Department, told The Charlotte Observer

Neither the two-level deck nor other buildings are at risk of collapse because of the July 16 damage, Nicholson said.

Langtree at the Lake is at Interstate 77, Exit 31 in southern Iredell County. Two officials with R.L. West, the developer of the community, didn’t return two phone calls by The Observer since Thursday requesting comment.

The boom is still on a parking deck ramp. The piece of equipment is too heavy for a structure built for far lighter vehicles and shouldn’t have been driven onto the ramp, Nicholson said.

If the boom collapses the flooring on which it rests, it would drop about 12 to 15 feet into a large, self-contained equipment storage room with a concrete foundation, according to Nicholson.

Workers at the development created enough space after the damage for parked cars to leave, he said.

Langtree is waiting for a company to bring in an 800-ton crane, possibly from out of state, to remove the lift, he said. He doesn’t know when that will happen.