City to add parking decks downtown
By Andre Coe
acoe@gannett.com
City engineers will meet today with potential bidders for a parking deck project near Riverwalk Stadium.
Plans also are under way to build a new parking deck at the corner of Washington Avenue and South Perry Street.
Both multilevel decks will have more than 300 parking spaces, said city engineer Chris Conway.
Eighteen companies from Auburn, Montgomery, Birmingham and Ozark, as well as Georgia and Mississippi, have already shown interest in building the parking deck at the northernmost end of Coosa Street across from the baseball stadium.
The city will open bids for the project Dec. 20.
Other construction projects going on downtown have contributed to the high number of contractors interested in the parking deck job, said Patrick Dunson, assistant city engineer.
"Rather than having to travel all over the state, they can keep most of their guys here," he said.
The Coosa Street parking deck is estimated to cost about $6 million, while the deck at Washington Avenue and South Perry Street will push closer to $7 million, said mayoral aide Jeff Downes, who supervises downtown redevelopment.
In addition to the parking deck near the stadium, the city plans to create a cul-de-sac at the end of Coosa Street, which currently ends at the CSX railroad tracks, Conway said.
The Coosa Street project is expected to take about a year to complete, Dunson said.
Downes said the construction projects are part of a larger plan for downtown revitalization that has included the construction of Riverwalk Stadium, the Riverwalk along the Alabama River and the new intermodal bus facility, in addition to the Court Square renovations. Plans also include converting all but two of the one-way streets downtown to two-way streets.
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