Crews work to complete construction of the Spring Street Parking Deck Wednesday morning in Fayetteville.

Photo: Todd Gill, Fayetteville Flyer

Fayetteville officials will celebrate the opening of the Spring Street Parking Deck during a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 23 at the east entrance of the new structure.

Construction of the four-level, 236-space deck is wrapping up this week on the south end of the Walton Arts Center campus at Spring Street and School Avenue.

Design elements include glass treatment on the staircase towers and oxidized steel panels that are expected to turn a brick orange color over time, providing a protective finish. Living “green screen” walls of Virginia Creeper will be planted to grow on select exterior locations of the deck. The project also includes sidewalk improvements and an 8,000-gallon rainwater harvesting tank for irrigating the grounds surrounding the deck.

The deck incorporates the same pay-by-number parking system that’s used in the surrounding areas, including the main Walton Arts Center parking lot at Dickson Street and West Avenue. Drivers can pay at any of the six payment kiosks located throughout the deck, or at any other kiosk in the entertainment district. Free bicycle parking is available at 12 bike racks that can accommodate 24 bikes.

Crews broke ground on the $12 million project in October 2014 after nearly five years of discussions. While formal talk of the deck began in late 2009, the project is something Mayor Lioneld Jordan has championed since he was first elected in 2008, and has been a wish list item for some Dickson Street business owners since the early design stages of the Walton Arts Center in the late 1980s.

The deck was funded by $6.2 million in bonds being paid for using fees and fines from the city’s paid parking system. Other funding came from over $2 million in reserves, and nearly $1 million in revenue generated from the four-year-old paid parking program. Another $1.5 million came from funds the Walton Arts Center returned as part of its governance change agreement to help replace the arts center’s administrative offices, which were torn down and replaced as part of the parking deck project.

The deck is expected to open immediately following Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.