news-record.com

GREENSBORO - The City Council on Tuesday directed the city staff to study the feasibility of building a new parking deck downtown.

The center city already has four decks, but with more development on the horizon, more parking will be needed, said council member Robbie Perkins.

"At some point, this community is going to take off," Perkins told the council during a briefing session. "It's pretty close to that now. If a company said they wanted to bring 400 people downtown, I don't know where we'd park them."

Downtown officials applauded the idea, but suggested that the area probably needs two additional decks.

Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc., said he would probably locate a small deck in the city's South Elm-Greene Street surface lot.

"It wouldn't take the whole lot, maybe 200-250 spaces," Wolverton said. " ... The trick to locating a (parking) garage is multiple users."

Wolverton said a deck in the South Elm-Greene street area could serve patrons of the Carolina Theatre as well as people shopping and dining on South Elm.

A second deck might serve the former North State Chevrolet property that developer Roy Carroll wants to buy as well as NewBridge Bank Park, the city's minor league baseball stadium, or a future office building.

The city currently has more than 2,800 spaces in its decks at Bellemeade, Davie, Church and Greene streets.

Talk about a possible new deck come up Tuesday when Jim Westmoreland, the city's acting assistant city manager, presented council with a proposed policy that would offer businesses that created qualified new jobs downtown a discount on parking in the city's decks.

"The timing for putting that on the table was perfect," Perkins said in explaining how the discussion had shifted to a deck study. " ... We want to try to be pro-active."

The council instructed Westmoreland to rework the policy so that, instead of providing a discount, the parking would be free for a certain period.

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com.