The Covers are Coming! The council agrees to build them

November 28, 2007

I have to say first WOW, DTM readers definitely rallied behind this project, I think I broke my comments record for any one post. People feel passionately about this project, both residents and out-of-towners alike. Our rallying has paid off! The deal, at least Phase 1, went through. Leal broke the deal down into a $9 million dollar proposal by Granite Construction to build the raw trench covers (two blocks) - City staff estimated another $1.5 million in indirect costs bringing the total to $10.5 million. The rest of the deal - retail, covers, etc - was called phase 2. Council agreed to fund phase 1 and to write a contract with Granite to get the covers built as soon as possible. Funding came from $3.5 million in Fitz garage lease revenues which had been previously set aside, a half million in some kind of Fed Grant AND 6.3 million from revenues that had been previously set aside for the 10 North canopy ($3.8 million) and ($2.5 from something else). They would separately find another 200K to make the $10.5 total. Some kind of Federal rebate is supposed to refund a portion of the $6.8 million to the city at a later date so the canopy, etc are “just delayed” not killed. The most interesting other comments related to Simon (the mall developer). The council wanted staff to quickly approach him to see if he might be interested in quickly doing some kind of deal to get all the phase 2 trench retail built and leased so their property tax revenues could quickly increase. So the covers will be built, and Leal will get the footprint he needs to develop the retail.