Town Council Work Session
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What is the Liberty Lab Public‑Private Partnership proposal for the Liberty Street parking lot?
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I'd like to open tonight's town council work session of February 26th. If it is okay with the members of council, I would like to move up item C to have that presented first. partnerships here who aren't feeling so good, so we want to be able to let them give their presentation and head home. Okay, so Liberty Lab Public-Private Partnership Workgroup. Mr.
McAuliffe. Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council. I'll start things off, and then I will share the podium with the proposing team here that you're all familiar with. So we'll get into this. I thought I'd start out and give
I do have to ask, they have asked for 20 minutes. Does anybody have an objection if it takes them 20 minutes? All right, go ahead.
Good with 20, all right, thank you. I'll try to be quick and save a lot of time for the proposing team here. Wanted to start out with just a little refresher for everyone and for those who might be watching who are new to this project. We're talking about the Liberty Street parking lot, which is an existing town parking lot within the historic district of downtown here. It's about two acres. in size it's got 120 free parking spaces and 12 or 11 metered parking spaces it also has some satellite operations for our public works department as well and as we all know it's built on top of the former town dump site which has created a number of challenges for us as we've looked at how we might re-envision this space visually to depict this here for you can see it sits in the southwest quadrant of the town south of royal street west of wort street
It abuts the town branch and across that is the W&OD Trail. It's close to Georgetown Park and just to the west are the Chesterfield Square townhomes. And here are some images of what the site looked like in the 1950s when this was the town's dump site. You can see the material being loaded into here. And then over the years it has been redeveloped and capped and covered with asphalt and now is used as a parking facility for the town. The town has been talking about this site for a while. We've had some unsolicited proposals over the past several years. And a few have looked at different opportunities on the site. And that got the town thinking, is this an appropriate location for a public-private partnership for the town?
So back in May of 21, that conversation happened. Long story short, we get into 2021, further into the year in November. Staff was directed to develop and issue an RFP. That was issued in April of 22. And we received one response. And that's going to be the group that you're going to be hearing from this evening in May. We received that proposal. The request for proposal is the town had envisioned it laid out some options here, one was the town to sell or gifts liberty parking lot to a developer and in turn the developer then take that site and develop something on it. We called out that we do need to still maintain parking in that area, so that 120 spaces, give or take would need to be maintained in some form or fashion.
And we also envision commercial development happening on the site with the potential for residential on the upper floors. And if residential was proposed, there was going to be favorable consideration given to a project that would include affordable housing. So here's the image you'll remember from a while back when you first saw this. This is the proposal from the proposing firm that's here again this evening. And initially it was a 400... and 50-seat performing arts center with some flex space, a 4,000-square-foot restaurant. It had 65 units of senior affordable housing constructed on the western portion of the site. It was going to be a fee-simple purchase of town land, and the revenue from that sale would go towards the site remediation, and there would be parking facilities underneath the performing arts center and beneath the affordable housing component that would be shared both from their uses on site as well as the needs for that off-site parking.
The public garage and the Performing Arts Center would be owned and operated by the town.
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Agenda
8 items
1
What is the Liberty Lab Public‑Private Partnership proposal for the Liberty Street parking lot?
0:12–18:26
2
How does the history of the Liberty Street parking lot influence the redevelopment plans?
18:26–33:25
3
What options were presented in the RFP for the Liberty Street site?
33:25–50:56
4
What are the key components of the proposed performing arts and events center?
50:56–1:09:31
5
How is the project being funded and what are the projected revenues?
1:09:31–1:23:23
6
What traffic and parking challenges are associated with the development?
1:23:23–2:35:00
7
What concerns did council members raise about ownership and operations?
2:35:00–4:12:00
8
What decisions and next steps were outlined for moving the project forward?
4:12:00–7:58:15
Speakers
5 identifiedOfficials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.