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Part of Pittsburgh Botanic Garden’s parking lot collapses

PITTSBURGH — A massive crater formed in the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden’s parking lot over the weekend, but Executive Director Keith Kaiser says it’s not a sinkhole.

“All of a sudden, on this past Sunday morning, between 8:30 and 9, when just a few staff members were here, we started to see a small hole develop and then quickly, within 20 minutes or so, we had this happening,” he explained.

Kaiser says the garden’s stormwater retention system is to blame for the hole.

A tank that can hold up to 177,000 gallons of water collapsed beneath the asphalt.

“We have all the stormwater from the roofs and landscapes and parking lot going into a structure that’s below grade underneath this parking lot,” said Kaiser. “The structure of that retention system broke down.”

Just steps away from the crumbled area, crews spent Wednesday morning preparing to keep the grounds open to guests.

The garden has adjusted traffic flow and asks anyone coming to see its 65 acres of scenic foliage to park in a secondary parking lot until it can better secure the parking spaces around the collapsed area.

“We have 25 less parking places in our parking lot for a while, but we are open as normal,” said Kaiser.

The Botanic Garden hopes to have everything cleaned up and repaired by December.

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