City formally rejects parking garage bids, moves to Plan B

The possibility of a downtown garage to remedy Greencastle's parking issues was officially grounded Wednesday evening.

The Greencastle Redevelopment Commission, acting on the recommendation of Mayor Sue Murray and a motion from Gary Lemon, voted unanimously to reject a second set of bids submitted on a proposed 146-space parking structure at Jackson, Walnut and Indiana streets.

The decision, made during a special meeting at City Hall, comes less than a week since a rebidding procedure failed to produce proposals anywhere near the engineer's estimates of $3,393,529.

On the second bidding go-around, Wilhelm Construction, Indianapolis, offered a new low bid of $4,185,000, still more than three-quarters of a million dollars above the estimated construction costs.

Also submitting proposals in the rebidding process were Hannig Construction, at $4,359,000, and Hageman, at $4,362,000. A disqualified late bid, from Midwest Construction, was also reportedly far too high.

Mayor Murray asked the commission to reject all bids "and prepare to move on to Plan B."

That plan would be proposed surface lots, including one to be created on the site that once held the promise of a two-story structure that would have offered free parking along with freedom from rain and snow on a covered ground floor.

Where once that design figured to house 146 cars, a surface lot in the same location would be lucky to provide half that total.

"We certainly can't accommodate 146 spaces in the one block we do own," Mayor Murray said, noting that a surface lot doesn't have to be just blacktop and yellow lines.

It can at least be aesthetically pleasing, she said, suggesting such amenities as trees, plantings, decorative lighting and perhaps even a clock tower could be incorporated into the design.

She said Ratio Architects will be instructed to come up with a "comfortable plan" to provide much-needed parking without breaking the bank.

"The problem remains the same," the mayor said. "We've got to get cars off the courthouse square."

And one essential element of doing that is providing free parking close to downtown without a threat of parking tickets therein.

The Jackson-Walnut-Indiana location may be just one of multiple surface lots to come as the commission agreed that Plan B will include "looking at additional locations" for surface parking.

The existing surface parking lots that ring the downtown area -- Vine Street, the lot north of the Banner Graphic and the Columbia and North Indiana streets site -- will all be free parking locations once the new lot is in use.

"The first piece of good news," Mayor Murray told the commission, "is that the grant has not gone away. IHCDA (Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority) is all in favor of helping us address our parking problem."

Unfortunately no portion of the $3,550,000 in grant funds received from IHCD as part of the $19 million Stellar Grant package can be used on revamping existing parking lots to make them more than concrete bumpers and blacktops.

Also those funds cannot be used on any other project locally. Not on repairing roads or bridges or even improving infrastructure.

And whatever funds remain once the grant money covers the cost of addressing the downtown parking issue must be returned to IHCDA, Mayor Murray said.

While a parking garage was seen as perhaps the ultimate solution to longstanding Greencastle parking issues and diminished development around the courthouse square, nobody saw such an enormous price tag coming.

The original bids were a true budget buster, coming in more than $1 million over estimates. Rebids weren't much better as engineers were confident new bids would be $600,000 or $800,000 lower than the original submissions.

That, of course, didn't happen, which led to the decision to move on to Plan B.

"Ratio can't explain it," Mayor Murray said of the architect firm led by Bill Browne.

"We did all the pre-steps to avoid this situation," Redevelopment Commission President Erika Gilmore reminded the group.

City Attorney Laurie Hardwick explained one issue that emerged and helped drive up the price was a need to shore up the construction site area, including the adjacent alley, through a "very complicated" effort before the garage could be erected.

"We're certainly disappointed," Mayor Murray told the Banner Graphic soon after the second round of high bids doomed the parking garage, the largest and most expensive single element of the Stellar Grant package.

"But there's absolutely no way for us (the city) to put in the money to make that happen," the mayor added. "And there's no point in rebidding."

Local match for the parking garage project was expected to be $300,000, of which an estimated $268,000 already has been expended (including property acquisition costs). That money comes from Greencastle Redevelopment Commission funds accumulated through the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds its administers for the city.

The parking garage project had been seen as a 12-month project with a late spring 2014 opening originally predicted.

The Redevelopment Commission will next meet in regular session at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28 at City Hall.