GAINESVILLE – When the Gainesville City Council gave unanimous approval Tuesday evening to four Tax Allocation District (TAD) funding requests, the council’s vote simultaneously “got the ball rolling” for the expansion of the city-owned parking deck.
City Manager Bryan Lackey said that the future tax revenue increases created by the construction of the retail/office building for Carroll Daniel Construction at 330 Main Street, and the construction of the multi-story luxury condominium/retail/restaurant development at 106 Spring Street by Knight Commercial Real Estate, together will provide sufficient revenues (known as the “increment” in the language of the TAD resolutions) for the city to add two levels to the existing parking deck.
“Both projects…will create new taxes…all of those new taxes will go into our TAD fund…those funds that come off that for the next 15 years or so will be utilized…and the ‘increment’ will go to the city to cover our cost of expanding the deck,” Lackey explained.
The initial funding source for the parking deck expansion will be provided by the sale of municipal bonds according to Lackey; those bonds will then be retired as the future taxes from the two new TAD projects is realized and collected.
Lackey said work on the parking deck could begin as soon as the Main Street project gets underway. “We have to wait until Carroll Daniels starts their project…because we’ve got to make sure that happens…and the increment will be in place,” Lackey said.
“I anticipate us starting days after they start the foundation work on their building,” Lackey added.
Lackey said the city will do everything possible to mitigate the construction activity happening in the area.
“The pieces that we put the parking deck together (with) are precast pieces and are made off-site,” Lackey said. “As soon as we give them the go-ahead that contractor will start making them at their factory and ship them to us.”
“They’ve actually got roughly about a 60 to 90 day time frame when they will install all of it and that will be later in the summer,” Lackey said, adding that the task will require the use of numerous large cranes to set the precast pieces in place.
“We’ll be adding two levels which is about 168 spots,” Lackey said.
Total budgeted cost for the project, according to Lackey, is $4.3-million.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2018/2/634034/gainesville-downtown-parking-deck-ready-to-rise