Final contracts approved for new City Centre parking garage

Though what the final product will look like remains a mystery, the city on Wednesday approved the final construction and design contracts for a new City Centre parking garage to occupy what is now the city hall parking lot.

NDC Construction and Fawley-Bryant architectural firm were awarded preconstruction services contracts earlier this year in what turned into an unusual process of a silent ballot vote.

Wednesday’s contracts finalize their services to the project. Fawley-Bryant’s contract is worth about $874,000 for design and engineering services, while NDC will receive a profit margin of 5.25 percent of the project’s overall cost, now estimated to be around $12 million.

“Both companies have been very gracious to do a lot of the work with no agreements to get us to where we are today,” Economic Development Director Carl Callahan said. “We are now ready to sign contracts for construction services.”

Callahan said the contracts are less than what other municipalities have paid for similar projects and that both companies helped in keeping costs down, “and these prices reflect our long-term partnerships with these firms.”

Though timelines for construction and the final design have not been presented, Ward 1 Councilman Gene Gallo said previous project updates have work expected to begin by February and taking about eight or nine months to complete. Discussions began on the garage when the city entered into a development agreement for the new $17 million Spring Hill Suites hotel under construction in the 100 block of 12th Street West, across from city hall.

The city pledged 100 parking spaces to the hotel to make the deal happen and taking into consideration the future parking needs in downtown, the garage concept moved forward.

But not just any parking garage.

“You look at most of them and they are pretty basic,” Mayor Wayne Poston said. “We want an iconic building, not just a parking garage.”

The concept has been four-to-five parking levels with ground floor retail to extend Old Main Street’s retail component with a possible restaurant. Top floor residential was discussed, but it’s the one thing that isn’t going to happen for sure.

“Based on past history when I brought this up 25 years ago about doing something on our waterfront that could have been done at a low cost, I want it for public record that I tried very hard to get residential on top of this parking garage,” Gallo said. “I respect the cost factor decision not to do it, but in the future somebody is going to wish that they did because it’s going to cost a whole lot more then and we need downtown residential. The location is perfect and we want young people living downtown.”

Final drawings and plans for the new garage are expected sometime after the first of the year.

This story was originally published December 20, 2017 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Final contracts approved for new City Centre parking garage."