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Council supports Old Town garage
BY CRAIG STONE
The City Council voted in
a meeting on September 2 to submit an application for $300,000
from Maryland's Community Legacy Fund that would help finance
the construction of a parking facility in Old Town.
The proposal includes preliminary plans for a three-level
garage that would be on the block that stretches from Carroll
and Laurel avenues to Eastern Avenue. The land is owned by
landlord John Urciolo, who is developing just off of the property
where the parking garage would be and needs 100 spaces to
meet the county zoning requirement for his development. All
the spaces in the lot would be metered.
Mayor Kathy Porter made clear that agreeing to submit an
application for state funding in no way meant that they had
agreed to allow Urciolo to build a garage.
The Community Legacy Fund supports private-public partnerships
such as the one proposed by Urciolo and supported by Economic
Community Development Director Sara Anne Daines.
Under the proposed deal, the $300,000 from the state would
go towards the garage, and Urciolo would finance the remaining
$650,000 in estimated construction costs. The city would then
be required to pay the state back over 10 years with money
made from the new parking meters. The city would pay Urciolo
back over 20 years, 10 years after the state debt is paid,
with no interest.
Urciolo said at the council meeting that he would be willing
to let the debt stretch out over a longer period of time if
the profits from the meters were not meeting the projections
given in the proposal.
The council questioned the $30,000-per-year revenue predictions.
If actual income from meters does not meet that projection,
the city would be forced to pay back a loan from the state
out of its own pocket.
Daines outlined the need for more parking, saying that if
nothing changes within 800 feet of the proposed site, the
Old Town area would be 71 parking spaces short of current
Montgomery County development standards. "If additional
commercial development were to occur in that area, primarily
in restaurant, classroom, or theater space … there would
be a deficit or need for 257 additional parking spaces,"
she said, citing a Takoma Area Transportation Plan study.
However, Daines admitted that the figure is a bit high, because
the parking standards are the same used for locations such
as Rockville Pike. The lowest estimate was 98 new spaces needed
based on observed traffic.
"Places like Takoma Park, and Old Town and Takoma Junction
specifically, are basically fully developed. So to require
the same parking standards that you would in a more suburban
area with additional vacant land is unrealistic," Daines
said, explaining the reason for the discrepancy.
There are currently only 61 spaces in Old Town not designated
for specific businesses, private residents, or Metro riders.
All of those spaces are metered.
The three options discussed at the meeting were a surface
lot, which would only provide the spaces necessary for Urciolo's
development, a two tier lot, meaning a surface lot with one
deck on top, and a three tier lot, which would have two decks
and would be 24 to 28 feet tall. The proposal noted that it
would cost 20 percent more to add decks later if you begin
with just a surface lot than it does to begin by creating
a lot with one or two decks.
The county zoning requirement for Urciolo's development is
123 spaces, but there is a standard 15 percent waiver for
proximity to the Metro station, and another 10 percent is
taken off because multiple businesses would be using the lot,
and not all of them have the same operating hours. The number
of necessary spaces was rounded to 100 for the purposes of
the proposal.
Marc Elrich expressed concern that the city would take on
the budget for the parking garage, but that it would end up
only having enough spaces to serve the needs of Urciolo's
tenants and their customers.
"I'm not comfortable because it's not clear to me that
there are going to be any, or many, real spaces left over
for anybody else to use, and it's not comfortable to me that
the revenues are going to pay the bill on this thing,"
Elrich said.
But Urciolo said that a surface lot alone would add enough
spaces to cover the county requirements, and any decks over
it would be purely for the city.
"I had the right to close my lot off and only have my
customers use it, even though I've been allowing everybody
to use my lot," Urciolo said. "With this scenario,
the city's going to make them public so everybody can use
it."
City Manager Rick Finn supported the three tier proposal.
"If you look at the two tier or the three tier, you're
better off, from the city's perspective, to build a three
tier because your risk is the same," he said. "You've
got to pay that [$300,000] back, as we're proposing, in 10
years. You've got to pay John [Urciolo] back whatever the
balance is after that 10 years."
Finn went on to explain to the council that Urciolo would
be absorbing the carrying costs of the garage until it was
paid off. "That in itself makes the three tier a better
deal because you end up with more parking and you get the
same risk that you had with a two tier."
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