Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 24
President Wilshire
OK, I'll get to you right after Alderman Tencza.
Alderman Tencza
Alderwoman Kelly did have her hand up first so | have no problem deferring to her waiting until after if you’d
like to recognize her first Madam President.
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Kelly?
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you, Alderman Tencza, unnecessary | just wasn’t sure if you could see me, I’m a little dark in the
room I’m sitting in. So | just will keep this brief, | think | appreciate what Alderman Cleaver is trying to do
here. But! will not be supporting it. | think a lot of people before me have explained how a lot of these
things go hand in hand. We are talking about vibrancy of downtown. And because we are talking about a
Performing Arts Center, we now have multiple opportunities to develop and because of that, we also need
to look at parking expansion in our downtown. | would be remiss if | didn’t say that as my years of
Alderman, parking is one of the things | hear about the most. And so | think adding parking in downtown is
just a smart thing to be considering with all this development. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Alderman Tencza.
Alderman Tencza
Thank you and Madam President in defense of Alderman Cleaver’s motion. We all received a letter from
City Hall on July 1* about this situation. The letter states that there are 130 surface parking spaces down in
this area without bonding the $2.5 million dollars to raise this building. And then you are about 270 spaces
available in the garage which was significantly more than the number of parking spaces that the owners of
the businesses downtown said that they needed at their peak hours. We have talked about this School
Street Development, making it into housing for some time. When we discussed it, raising the building and
making a parking garage underneath was not part of that process or part of that plan until more recently.
So | believe that nothing has changed since July when we got that letter. That parking is an issue all over
downtown but there are ways that we can make the current situation feasible for everyone involved. Also,
too in the Infrastructure Committee we have been telling people for probably over a year now that there’s a
parking study which is going to start in spring of 2021 for downtown parking. Certainly if the parking study
came back and said yes, you need these parking spots, | think that would be different and then we would
have an expert who could tell us that this necessary for us to spend the money. Third, the City has been
talking about this Performing Arts Center for 30 years trying to make it a reality. People have been working
very hard over the past three, four, five years to bring the current PAC into fruition, raising money, doing the
architecture. | don’t understand why we are muddying all the work that they’ve done in trying to put this
parking, this $2.5 million dollar bond along with it. So | will support Alderman Cleaver’s motion. | think like
him, | support the $5.5 million dollars. | think we can still do the TIF, we can still develop that School Street
lot but | don’t believe that we need to spend the additional $2.5 million dollars for the parking space. Thank
you.
President Wilshire
Thank you. Anyone else? Alderman Dowd?
