You would think with all the silliness going on with the administration building the last thing Huether and his minions would want to do is push for a project by claiming it is a done deal before it is;
Project backers of a $40 million hotel, retail and residential facility as well as a public parking ramp known as The Banks are no longer pursing the downtown venture, citing higher than expected construction costs. As a result, the city intends to move ahead with the parking portion of the plan – a 600 space parking garage – as a standalone project at 110 E 10th Street where a surface parking lot sits.
Except, once again they are leaving out the finer details of ‘moving ahead’ like the administration building;
The contract with the construction manager – still being negotiated – and project financing will require council approval before any work begins on the parking ramp.
That’s right, the city council still has to approve bonding from the parking’s enterprise funds before any work can start. Remember those parking rate increases passed recently? They were pushed through to pay for bond payments on a new parking ramp. Now a parking ramp we don’t need. Once again, the administration got the cart before the horse, and we are all paying for it.
We don’t need another parking ramp. We should have thought of all this before selling a fully functional one for $1.
Don’t you think that one of the major reasons this deal fell through is the fact that only a couple of the elitist apartments behind the Top Hat have been filled?
Still wondering here how the city was going to get the owners of the phillips ave buildings to sell out on this. It’s still just baffling.
Everyone is broke except mmm. Way to go hubris. The cool place to live is no longer down town Mmm pissed all the dog owners off I think and drove off the long term down town residents. I should hope that our council not continue to ratify all the hiring of const managers of risk and bogus architect renditions of phony bldgs and get this mayor under control.
If they must build a parking garage, do it at Denny Dome or the airport. People park everywhere blocks away when there’s an event. Parking was expanded at the airport but it’s not enough. In either case, parking rates would pay for it. Downtown would be empty like other ramps there. Huether appointed Smith parking director. Everything he’s done is wrong. It’s a project and marketing position. His education is clown college.
The city is in the private parking, hotels, tennis, concerts, and railroad business. It’s not an April Fools joke. I’d join this country club but you have to be a city official or developer.