With Mayor Jordan’s downtown parking deck project on hold for at least another two weeks, we began wondering Tuesday night just how long it could be before any dirt is ever turned.
That answer came Wednesday morning at the mayor’s latest parking deck committee meeting.
During the meeting, newly appointed parking deck project manager (and current utilities director for the city) David Jurgens outlined his estimated timeline of the parking deck project.
“It’s not an overnight process,” said Jurgens, who explained why it could be at least a year before any construction begins.
Once the council authorizes the issuance of bonds, Jurgens said it could be three months before a consultant is hired to perform a preliminary site assessment of the preferred location, a task that Jurgens said would take six to eight weeks for a firm to complete.
Once the results are in, city staff could begin creating some solid options for the City Council to review.
“That’s when the real choice comes down of what do we want to build downtown and can we afford to build it,” said Jurgens.
As with any major City Council decision of staff-created choices, we’d expect at least another two or three months before a preliminary design is approved.
At that point, the city would issue the bonds and move forward with the final design of the deck, something that could take another three months.
Those estimates put the plan in the September/October 2012 range before construction bidding could occur.
And that’s just the bidding process. We’ll let Jurgens take it from here.
“It probably would be after football season before we’re starting construction,” he said.
