Council Dumps Meeting Room from Parking Structure

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

Sept. 11 -- The philosophy of “let’s do it right or not all” spurred a bitterly divided City Council to “dump” a 2,500-square-foot community room from the proposed Civic Center parking structure Tuesday night.

The move will save money and parking spaces but eliminate a communal space -- which the council previously deemed a mandatory feature of the structure -- that could have showcased a fifth floor panoramic view of the city.

The community room was eliminated when a majority failed to agree on either placing it on the fifth floor and displacing 79 parking spaces at a cost of $2.1 million, or locating it on the ground floor, displacing 39 spaces for a million less.

Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown and Council members Ken Genser and Michael Feinstein argued that cramming a community room on the bottom floor gave the city just another mediocre meeting space instead of a lasting “monument.”

“This is a no-brainer,” Genser said. “If not for the view, why build it? Why build a community room between an elevator and an airshaft. That’s a colossal waste of money. It makes no sense.

"Community rooms have a lot of functions, including receptions and parties and celebrations and things like that,” Genser added. "This city doesn't have any space for that now except for the east wing (of the Civic Auditorium), which in the long term is going to be replaced with something else and certainly isn't the greatest space for festive events."

Opposing this view were Mayor Richard Bloom and Council members Bob Holbrook, Herb Katz and Pam O’Connor. They listed different reasons why the top floor was an impractical location -- it's too expensive, the view would distract people’s attention and the cars circulating behind the walls would make it impossible to concentrate. Besides, why spend that kind of money when there are already plenty of community rooms in the city.

The sticking point for Katz was whether the room would be partially or fully isolated from the rest of the structure. A partially isolated room costs less, but doesn’t guarantee that the room would be totally protected from the sounds and vibrations of the traffic circulating on the other side of the walls, he said.

“If we're gonna do this, let's do it right or not at all -- full isolation," Katz said. "I definitely want full isolation or I won't vote for it." But he added that full isolation on the fifth floor meant eliminating too many parking spaces.

"What are we doing? We're trying to build a parking structure," Katz said. "We start eliminating spaces once you have full isolation on the fifth level and that's 79 spaces you lose. Full isolation on street level you only lose 39 spaces, that's 40 cars difference, and that's a lot. I think we ought to look at it that way."

Holbrook agreed. "It just seems to me that the loss of parking in the parking building just doesn't add up."

"Thinking about it,” said Holbrook, “I don't know if the city or the staff or if we've ever considered the availability of meeting space in the city now -- who needs it?"

The City, Holbrook added, should ask "whether it's being used and whether or not it's even necessary to add more at this particular time?"

But because the City Council has to follow its own regulations, “dumping” was not an action option.