news-record.com

GREENSBORO — City Council members will hear today that downtown can support a new parking deck that could hold about 400 cars, cost from $6 million to $8 million and contain 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of retail space.

City transportation officials will brief the council at 3 p.m. on a recently completed parking deck study but will not recommend what the council should do. As many as five possible sites will be offered.

“We are showing the need for about one location right now,” Adam Fischer, city transportation director, said Monday. “We are looking all over downtown.”

Fischer would not identify the sites. He said that some, but not all, of the locations are city-owned.

“We are probably ... talking about one on the south side of town, but that is debatable,” Fischer said. “It all depends on development.”

In locating a new deck, Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc., said he hopes the council will consider the South Elm Street area and West Washington Street, near the Melvin Municipal Office Building, the courthouse and the new county jail.

Those areas are under development pressure.

On South Elm, work has started on a new, $5 million, five-story building that will eliminate some spaces in the city’s Elm-McGee street parking lot.

In addition, the opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum next year will increase pressure for more parking downtown.

The new jail will wipe out more than 100 spaces in an existing surface lot.

“I think there are a couple of critical locations right now,” Wolverton said. “I also think there are potential projects that, should they move forward, will need additional parking.”

Wolverton would not elaborate on what those projects might be.

Fischer said a new deck could be paid for using existing revenue sources. He said the city’s existing decks — off Church, Bellemeade, Greene and Davie streets — are generating about $700,000 a year.

Those decks, all of which have been paid for, provide more than 2,800 spaces. They range in size from 415 spaces in the one on Church to nearly 1,300 for the one on Bellemeade.

The briefing is expected to include architectural drawings.

“They don’t even look like decks,” Fischer said. “They would have nice architectural features and storefronts that would be leased.”

He said a new deck could take 18 months to two years to build, depending on the size and location.

The  report today comes in response to a council request in August 2008 to study the feasibility of a new deck downtown.

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