Board of Aldermen 02-23-2021 Page 23
Alderman Lopez
| was actually still ...
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
| mean given what the Mayor has just said, | still maintain that the plan being attached to this Legislation
tonight would have probably cleared up all of these questions. But with what Alderman Dowd replied | feel like
we can move forward with it because if we need to make changes to the lease after the next step then there
wouldn’t be any particular issue. | just want to clarify that it was said earlier that if you want to vote against this
because you don’t like the project, | would vote against the amendment or moving too quickly on it because |
do like the project and | don’t want this to turn into another debacle. | mean | guess | am being unfair calling it
a debacle but uncomfortable situation like what we had with River Front Landing that cost more money
because I’m conscious of the fact that this is moving into an area of low income needs. And | don’t want
people in the future to start blaming people who are living there for costing the City more money or getting
special favors or anything. So | do think it’s important for us to have these answers, but we have them we just
literally need to put them in probably the next agenda meeting or the next discussion where that lease comes
back to us. So | would be comfortable moving this forward. | appreciate the diligence that Alderman Jette
showed and | do think he brought some important issues up and | appreciate Alderman Lu’s attentiveness. But
| do think we also have enough information right now to at least do the Master Development Agreement.
President Wilshire
Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Thank you. | wasn’t at this meeting but | am looking at the minutes right now and the question was from
Alderman Klee, “Director Cummings, the 50 spaces that you said are going to be there, did we lose any
spaces or do we have 50 and are we still going to have 50”. And | am going to quote Director Cummings, “No
this is going to be an approximate reduction of about 30 spaces. | want to say we have about 80 in the School
Street Lot now. We will have about 50 in the School Street Lot when it is all said and done. But that’s why it is
important that we create that additional 20 to 30 on-street parking in and around the development”. | think it’s
important that that got on the record tonight. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you Alderman Clemons. Alderman Jette.
Alderman Jette
Thank you Madam Chairman. The numbers that we are talking about are things that have been said. | know in
the past we talked about 50 spaces. What | am saying is that this agreement that this Resolution is adopting
does not provide that number. Now the Mayor said that the parking plan was submitted back in August. Well
at the Budget Review Committee Meeting that we had a couple of weeks ago, the developer said that the plan
had not been finished yet. | think if Attorney Melville is still on, maybe he can answer, | think tonight he said
that he submitted the plan to Mr. Cummings within the last week or so. So all | am saying is if — you can’t
enforce a contract based upon words that were spoken at meetings or during discussions or whatever. You
have to look to the documert. If it’s not in the documert, it’s not there. You can’t submit evidence of what was
intended, you’ve got to go by what is in the document. You’ve got to read the document and right now the
document that we are dealing with does not tell us how many spaces are going to be in this garage.
