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City parking authority considers garage project

More parking spaces would help unlock business potential

The Altoona Parking Authority is working with a consulting group to outline a parking-garage project for downtown, to ease the parking shortage there — and to help unlock business-development potential.

The company — which authority CEO Patrick Miller declined to name — is not under contract with the authority but could ultimately become project designer, Miller said.

The firm will focus on the area of highest parking demand — around the 1400 block of 13th Avenue, on the 12th Avenue side — where there is already a large surface lot within sight of the front door of Penn State’s Aaron Building, according to Miller.

Ultimately, the authority wants to get Penn State students’ cars out of the long lot next to the 10th Avenue Expressway, making that area fully available for business parking, Miller said Monday at a meeting of the Greater Altoona Economic Development Corp.

The 200-space garage project could cost about $4 million and would require support from “stakeholders” to obtain a state multi-modal transportation grant of up to $3 million, funding that Miller said would be necessary to do the project.

Parking garages never pay for themselves, even if funding is stretched out for 40 years, Miller told the GAEDC board.

The company that is working with the authority could become an “investment partner” in the project, Miller said.

The authority can choose a planning and design firm without bids because those “professional services” are exempt from the state’s bidding requirement for public projects, Miller said.

However, it’s possible the rules of the grant program would require competitive bidding for design, he said.

It’s also possible that when it comes time for design, it would be in the authority’s interest to put that part of the project out for bid, he said.

Miller predicted the authority would have a better handle on the proposed work within a couple of months.

Learning the fate of a grant application could take six to 12 months more, he said.

Designing the garage and obtaining a construction permit could take another six months, he said.

Overall, the project could take three years, Miller said.

The large amount of vacant building space downtown is one gauge of the latent business development potential that a parking garage could unlock, according to authority Chairman Jerry Hymes.

If the authority succeeds in building the garage, it will need to “force long-term parkers” into it, because transient parkers won’t want to use it, Miller said.

He has seen evidence that some downtown parking clients will choose a surface space over a garage space even if it requires a modestly longer walk, he told the GAEDC board.

While the garage is a long-term solution to the downtown parking shortage, the authority is working on short-term fixes, including the creation of 15 spaces with the impending demolition of the Downtowne Drug building, Miller said.

The authority is also considering the lease of spaces at the Intown Square parking lot, Miller said.

Spaces owned by the First Baptist Church are “also in play” — although they’re “on the fringe” of downtown, Miller said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.

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