I will call this committee meeting or this meeting of the committee of the whole to order the clerk will call the role Mr Callahan present M gry Smith present M qu present m l present Miss Leon pres Miss wilham pres Mr colog present YouTube reminder if you start this meeting after 6 p.m please make sure to scroll ahead so that the YouTube stream is current rather than a recording of an earlier portion of the meeting there is one agenda it agenda item wed Street Parking Garage project tonight's meeting is for for informational purposes only the administration and the parking authority have asked for this opportunity to give a full scope of the project and we are happy to have the public dialogue no votes will be taken tonight I will accept public comment after discussion of the agenda item with a 5 minute time limit we will begin with a presentation of this project from the administration representative would anyone else from oh my bad well thank you very much um for the opportunity to present uh this evening we do have a presentation prepared um and we will start with uh mayor Reynolds giving some opening [Music] remarks so first of all I want to thank everybody here on city council for giving us this opportunity uh to present here um as far as a lot of the conversations so far as far as what we've been talking about as far as wall and Street Garage obviously led to a lot of questions and the reason why we wanted to be able to get everybody together was to be able to go through a lot of the history a lot of the um ideas behind what's going on here as well as take a look at what the consequences are going to be going into the going into the future um so it and this isn't I sat for years over here before I ran for city council and then I was there for 14 years and I've now been over over here for a couple years and I understand that a lot of people have a lot of strong feelings within this room and that's what democracy is and people have opinions and a lot of what we're going to say probably is not going to change your opinion because your priorities are your own what we are going to try to do is lay out a kind of comprehensive look on what we're talking about as far as Walnut Street is concerned what some of the history has been and also what is at stake this conversation has been a lot and I watched the hard meetings couple weeks ago this conversation has been a lot about how tall a garage was going to be is it going to be 50 feet or 62 feet or is that elevat or going to be 73 feet or whatever it might be but this conversation in a lot of ways is a lot deeper than just how high a parking garage is it affects the future finances of the city it affects the vibrancy of our downtown it affects our ability to be able to support um our businesses on both the North side and the south side and it affects our future and as you can see up here with the first slide is like we can't talk about the 2025 new Wallen Street Garage without first looking at a couple questions and that's what does the next 50 years of our parking system require but also what does the next 50 years of our downtown require because if you were around here in 1970 and I was not but I many of you may have been we made decisions at that time in the name of urban renewal that set Bethlehem on a certain path both financially and economically that took us a long time to recover and part of this conversation is making sure that we avoid making those same mistakes so as we take a look here as far as what does the next 50 years of our parking system require what does the next 50 years of our downtown require we need to also start with a conversation about where do we come from and where are we in 20124 so what we're going to cover tonight our Administration follows Forward Thinking urban planning principles that supports a sustainable Community for the 21st century I'm going to talk a lot about the demand and how we have an overbuilt garage parking system for the 21st Century we're going to talk about how this overbuilt garage has cost the city opportunities for parking and vibrancy for over 50 years about how we don't need anywhere close to 770 parking spaces in the new Walnut Street Garage I'm also going to talk about the financial implications of overbuilding parking because they are severe we don't need to look far um one of the things that you know I've done for years I look at what other cities have done and did you know you can look at Scranton you can look at Harrisburg other cities that face dire dire Economic Consequences because of their Parking Authorities and the debt they took on we're going to review these misguided plan misguided planning of the 70s Wallner Street Garage Pedestrian Mall we're going to review a lot of the uh history the public planning history of the current project and this last one is very important we're going to talk about how data is used to capture the comprehensive collection of experiences I think we all know a lot of people and we talk to people and we run into people but there are 75,000 people in this city and data is the way that you're able to put all of those experiences together to understand that it might not be just the three people you're talking to or the four people you're talking to and it's clear because I've heard many of the people in this room speak some of you have sent me emails some of you have talked before some of you sent letters of support some of you sent letters of this is a terrible idea that people feel differently about this and that's fine and one of the reasons why we use data is we pull all those experiences together to make the best decisions okay and then after I'm done talking Mr fernstrom and th are going to talk about those wall Street um garage harb submissions then miss heler is here um our Planning and Zoning director for 25 years one of the people that has been charged with kind of unwinding the mistakes of urban renewal and then um Miss Collins is going to get up and talk about what has been done what has not been done and what will be done on the development piece in 24 and 25 the garage piece is a lot a lot a lot further than any decisions about the development piece and one of the things Miss Collins is going to talk about is other than the concept idea that we want to put something that is mixed use close to our downtown and the idea that we do not want to build 770 parking spaces because that would be a very bad idea we are not very far as she's going to really go into and talk about where we are as far as that mixed mixed use development piece is concerned okay so it's always important in any any conversation by the parking authority and let me also start by saying is I know that Miss Collins and Mr fernman said a lot of information going back many years to members of city council this is a project that has been being talked about for about 10 years 2015 was one of the first times that the parking authority talked about this but I always think we need to take a step back further than that and talk about what the purpose of the parking authority is and I can tell you what the purpose of the parking authority is not and it is not to make money the parking authority is not guided with making money that's not what they're supposed to do what they want to do is regulate parking where the demand outpaces the supply and support the growth and development of the city to contribute to a safe accessible and sustainable community um and we're going to talk about what the purpose of the parking authority once again is it's not to make money they don't like writing tickets what we don't want is we don't want people sitting at the same parking space all day long we don't want to have a garage that is sitting there paying off debt where nobody is parking it his job Mr Furniture job the parking authority is not about making money it's about working on an integrated parking system so why do we need to regulate parking and this is a good problem to have we have about 272 on street spots in our North Side downtown core I think most people would agree that all else all else being considered you like to park in the street that's what the data shows that's what people say if we had enough on street parking spots two things one is we would not need any off street parking we also would have a huge problem because we wouldn't have enough people coming into our downtown if we had this romantic version that you could leave your house get in your car drive down and park outside of wherever you want to go we wouldn't be Bethlehem we would be a dead City so this is good that we have more people that want to come down than not we did some numbers we have on average about 813 downtown Parkers throughout the day on Street Plus off street so why is that important one of the things I'm going to talk about over and over again is it's not just about parking Supply it's not just about parking Supply it's about how your parking system works how can you create on street parking turnover and how can you incentivize some people to park on the street versus some some people to park in the garage and we build off street parking which is very expensive it's both very expensive as far as finances are concerned and it's also very expensive as far as opportunity costs or vibrancy cost as a term that I use is if you have parking garages generally do not have a lot of energy they don't we have made that mistake before the wall and Street Parking Garage I think is 500 feet long if you look at parking garages throughout the Lehi Valley you're going to be hard pressed to find another one that's more than 300 feet long people do not build that type of long garage and we've been paying we've been paying the price for 50 years um okay so how do we solve our parking supply problem we build parking capacity on and off Street and we incentivize in Str Strat and where people should park depending on their length of stay that you might think like what does that have to do with walner street because once again it's about utilizing the system and understanding that every dollar that we don't spend in building off street parking is another dollar that we can spend in our community where we want we want to uh be able to invest so from the beginning when we first came into office in January of 2022 we sat down and we talked about what have what are our goals for our parking authority because I'm I'm like everybody else in this room I've been downtown a lot um I grew up over a by Liberty High School I've heard a lot of different conversations about what we should do about parking and I don't know too many people that like parking it's generally not something that's a positive a lot of that has to do with our expectation is about where we expect to park and things like that which is why the ability of us to view the parking system as an integrated system rather than individual parking spots it's not just where am I going to park it's where do we want you to park how long are you going to stay and how are we gonna pay for one of the tasks that we gave to Mr fernstrom and I don't want to speak for him as far as both the number one and number two but I when he took the job I guess probably four or five years ago it was 2019 or so it we were in a we were not where we are now as far as technology is concerned the parking authority is not where it is now as far as finances are concerned and what I told Mr fernstrom when we took office in January of 2022 is I said we need to look at parking as an integrated system and we need to modernize and we need to use technology and he gave me all sorts of different things that he is doing that has modernized our parking system now people are like why is that important because it saves US money it saves US money that doesn't have to go into paying debt it saves US money that we don't need to then put into rates or into parking fines or into garage um prices and things like that I also told them and if you go back to when I was in the city council in 2017 one of the things I had suggested in in one of the um initiatives I had called betham 2017 was we need to take parking authority revenues and we need to put them back into the community if money is just the vehicle that we regulate parking we should be able to find a way to be able to take money paid into our downtown cores and put that money back into our community and I'm going to talk about that in a second and then the last thing that uh we talked to him was like we need to understand long-term parking usage Trends to make smart financial decision and maximize Community Investments once again many cities have gotten parking wrong and you might think like oh they build a building that doesn't have any vibrancy that's not what happens what ends up happening is it ends up adding to their debt it cuts into their ability to pay their police officers pay their firefighters pay their paramedics and they run into trouble this is not some you know I didn't make this up if you have your phone out you can just like Google Scranton parking authority bankruptcy you can Google the same thing about Harrisburg is like when you get into bad deals where you guarantee debt for your parking authority and they don't have the demand to meet it the taxpayers end up paying for it and and like I said that's something that we are trying to avoid so those history of parking authority Community Investments and these numbers mainly are the Downtown betham Association and the Southside Arts District and one of the things that we challenged Mr fernstrom to do was to increase those numbers going forward to be able to raise those numbers to be able to support and I even looked at either one of their budgets but I believe the parking authority as it should be is one of their if not their biggest contributors that is money that businesses don't have to pay into that's money that taxpayers we support both the Southside RS district and um uh the DBA and the Chamber through tax dollars but every dollar that Mr Fern from the parking authority are able to put back into that's events that's programming that's all these types of types of things that we really want to see as far as the Southside Arts District is concerned for many years that was supported by Lehi they've started to move in a different direction there which has made the Parking Authorities Investments there that much much more important now why does that matter because every thousand that Mr fom saves on Parking Authority debt is $1,000 doar that he can put back into the community that he's able to help to support the different things and they should we're not the first city that's done this other cities have done this everywhere to be able to fund not just this type of programming but also uh fund infrastructure last year the parking authority was able to support Fairview Park over in West Bethlehem we have all sorts of um meters along Broad Street going out there toward Pennsylvania Avenue and the ability of Mr Fern to take some of that Revenue passed by the parking authority board helped to build a park that people are going to be able to use for decades helped out by parking authority Revenue there is better things for parking authority Revenue to be paying for than too much garage debt okay so let's take a look here at the Walnut Street Garage timeline is in 1974 downtown betham businesses and homes were removed to make way for a pedestrian mall that was built to compete with Suburban malls as you probably know was all the age in the 50s and 60s to build these Suburban malls or to build these try these pedestrian malls to compete with the suburbs we thought somehow that the downtown market and the Suburban Market were interchangeable that people were looking for the same thing and then for the next 20 25 years pedestrian malls throughout America did not work they didn't work we had to people rip them up and we saw that we have seen that I was having lunch the other day at a restaurants and the business owner who may or may not be in the room right now came up to me and said I remember when that was closed and it was failing for 30 years I'm not sure I'm going to get up there and say this at the microphone on Monday but I'm telling you it was failing for 30 years when I when I was a kid here in Bethlehem when I was a kid it was failing because there was nobody here because we made the mistake that so many cities made of urban renewal we thought we could take out the homes that we could take a live work and play downtown and turn it into a work and play downtown we took out the idea that we wanted more people living in and around downtown people that buil pedestrian malls throughout America went through this European Plaza idea that somehow if they could do it we could do it we didn't take into account the idea that we had a different history of walking we had a different um history of density within our downtown a different history of mass transportation and their stuff and their plazas were a lot better looking than the type of things that we tried to build also and I know we talk a lot about history going forward and what buildings look like but it's I don't think it was talked about a lot in the past 50 years I like to think I know a lot about the city of betham and I didn't even know this about how many people had to be moved that were low income to allow for this development to happen we were reading through the council minutes um last week from the 70s 40 low-income families that were living in these neighborhoods were moved as urban renewal into somewhere else we don't tell that story when we talk about Bethlehem and we have a wonderful history but we also have things like that that we do not point to and say we should learn from this that those people are not going to be able to come in here and say what happened under urban renewal they didn't have the opportunity 50 years ago and it's certainly not a story that I that I I heard growing up in school or anywhere else and I just thought it had to be mentioned so 70s 80s 90s we all know stagnation continues downtown mayor Cunningham 2000 he reopens Broad Street I found a couple good quotes there from the morning call it was a mistake a failed experiment the project that was hoped to be Bethlehem savior is now considered nothing more than a mistake that has choked growth it didn't work and once again if you've ever read anything with Jane Jacobs when if you ever read anything about people that know anything about Urban Development you need to be able be able to create those shifts you need to create those shifts of people that are working downtown but then also that second shift of people that are either coming home downtown or visiting downtown and we built in 1974 entirely too much parking there were all sorts of I have the quotes here but I know there's a lot to get to Gordy Mau in his book I was looking at the other day he basically said like within year one that the G the garage Revenue didn't come in anywhere close to what people thought it was going to be we had all these promises we're going to put this department store here we're going to put this Performing Arts Center here we're going to bring these people down people are going to come down in their cars it's the 20th century and that didn't work we tried to take this idea that for thousands of years has been successful live work play and turn it into work and maybe sometimes play and I I remember when I was a kid I used to take my bike down and we would go to the boid or whatever and we would come down with our bikes and like I loved The Pedestrian Mall because there was nobody there I could take my bike over to Walnut Street we could throw the tennis ball off the off the off the side of the walner street garage it was great for me but that's not a vibrant downtown and you know this was the closest that we were able to get probably to being able to hang out downtown but when I would take when we'd take our bike down you could leave your bike anywhere it wasn't be stolen because nobody was walking around and what we've been able to do with people in this room and other places over the past 25 years is reverse that history and we've been able to reverse that history by think about the infield development we've had in the past 30 years in our downtown as far as the Liberty trust building and North Street Garage as far as the Main Street commment Building when mayor Cunningham came in with Tony Hannah one of the things they did was they changed our bedco revolving loan pool to allow for restaurants um like the edge and the Apollo um and hotels like Hotel Bethlehem to get the Gap financing that they needed to be able to open these type of strategic decisions to be able to invest in our downtown were some of the best decisions that the that the people could make at that time because we realized we needed to invest I see Mr alcohol here we started invest into our streetscape we started invest in the street we started to do all these different things to be able to support all of the kind of principles of urban development that we had been avoided so let's let's skip ahead here to January 2015 just because I know we have talked a lot and this obviously predates me as the mayor this predates Mr f but it is important history that leads us to this purpose where we are now in 2015 the BPA started spending these emergency repair dollars to keep wall and Street Garage open I think about $2 million has been spent over about seven years that was just emergency dollars to be able to keep people from parking there in February 2018 the BPA completed a Citywide facility study that recommended the wall and Street Garage is demolished and replaced it also further recommended to study the right size of the new garage and explore development opportunities now this is one of the moments too where people think like how does the parking authority make decisions they didn't make any quick decisions here and once again if youever phone out you can check all of the articles that Mr tulo and everybody else wrote for the morning call and Leah Valley live as far as what is going to happen in the future as far as this is concerned so skip ahead in November 2019 the BPA seeks out this comprehensive condition report on the C current facility status of walner Street Garage the to take a look at what were the short-term repairs that were needed to keep it open and also what were the long-term options in June 2020 they received this comprehensive condition report where the estimated cost is over $20 million to keep it open for 20 years now you might say like okay so then they decided at that point we got a report we're done we're good that's not what they did in September 2020 the BPA started a site feasibility study on the new Walden Street Garage we all know what was going on in 2020 so what the parking authority did was now's not a good time to do it so we're going to stop this particular study and wait until a better time after the pandemic to start that over again March 2021 they sought out a second comprehensive condition report on the status of the Walnut Street Garage and we're going to get back to that 18 million a second they weren't satisfied with the first one they didn't think that they were going to be able to make decisions based on the first one so they looked for the second one the parking it says estimated $18 million over 20 years parking authority board votes to accept that recommendation to demo and rebuild with the development opportunities December 2021 they vote for the walner street feasibility study for an overall vision of the site which included a parking demand study a temporary displacement plan and to assist development RFP process Mr fom can probably talk about this this happened at many public meetings many articles about it that this is not didn't come out of the sky this was a conversation they were having for years now January 2022 the our Administration meets with a the parking authority right after we came into office to discuss options Mr fernstrom comes in and he he presents the parking authority board feels strongly that the next Walnut Street Garage should avoid the mistakes of the past it doesn't need to be as big they don't have the demand and I say that's great but that's not good enough and you know I'm about to say in a little while some nice things about Mr fernstrom but I'm being honest here Mr fernstrom when it said like our history of making smart systemic decisions the parking authority did didn't exactly exist so I was a bit skeptical of Mr fernstrom when I when when we started in this job what I said is I don't want to see the data I want to see what data is out there why because we need to get the demand number right if you get the demand number wrong it affects nearly every part of your city failing to accurately quantify demand in the past has been a big problem for us and for others once again Walnut Street has never ever ever other than events that like musicfest and the holiday season which we're going to get to with some charts in a minute it is never ever ever paid off we built way too much parking and at that time we lost the opportunity cost again right now it's $445,000 for the cost of a spot in a garage this question about what's the right demand what's the debt we can pay where is it going to be full at that determines and dictates the future of tens of millions of dollars in spending by the parking authority and possibly the city of Bethlehem as I said before to influences the ability of the parking authority to fund the DBA the Southside ARS District infrastructure improvements all sorts of things that are super important city of betham taxpayers carry the financial liability if we get it wrong I'm going to talk more about that in a minute current and future parking rate payers have to pay the debt off it influ it influences the parking authority to capacity to pay for Capital Improvements throughout the parking system people have often comment on the fact that the Walnut Street Garage for 50 years and I think it's sister garage was the Pine Street Garage I believe and that was already taken down down in Easton you know last year or so it people have talked about like the lack of Capital Improvements in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and the 2000 that helped get to this point because it never had the demand to be able to make any type of money and with with us overspending on one garage it affects the rest of the city and I understand that that is not something that might be the number one thing on everybody else's list but it is the number one thing on my list and it's the number one thing on our list is how do we make sure that we keep our level of investment throughout the City and we're able to continue to invest and then the last one obviously is there's an enormous land use and vibrancy opportunity cost to over overbuilding parking parking facilities okay so how are we going to talk about demand first thing to understand is that there are two shifts of parking as I said before Jane Jacobs talked about those two shifts well we have two shifts that actually create two garages and the reason why is because people that driving to work are not the same people that are staying there throughout the night and we actually have a lot more than 770 spaces we like to think about 770 spaces but that's not the way to think about it you want to think about your parking garage as far as shifts are concerned so I'm going to talk about that I'm going to talk about the overall garage usage um we're going to talk about the peak times on Peak day usage the 99.9% examples I know these are the ones I used to teach psychology we have a way of remembering like the one thing that is the most Vivid in our mind so if there's the one time you showed up or if somebody came in very angry like those are the 99.9% examples we're going to show and then I'm going to talk about what the North Street garage looks like in 2024 so far so so here is the two shifts of parking and as you can see there I put at the bottom there's only one shift here so that's what the um uh North Street garage looks like at throughout the day as far as when people are coming in and when people are leaving you can obviously see that a lot of people are coming in at that time between 6 7 8 o' and those numbers if you can't see that closely each one of those lines is about 10 people so it's not like 50 or 100 and you can see those people come and then they leave at about 5 o'clock that's an office shift you could have a res reverse shift which is why when we talk about demand and we talk about things like the boy departments and you look at the idea that where you see the big the big peak there in the morning is you can also have a reverse Peak there of people leaving if they were taking their car and driving somewhere else and then they could come back at night night which are the two shifts of a garage we don't have that we have an office heavy garage that as you're going to see leads to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of extra spaces so what I did was I went to Mr fernstrom and I said Mr fom I want to see hour by hour what the occupancy is in the Walnut Street garage and the North Street Garage and he told me that he couldn't do it so he said I can however give it to you by every 15 minutes which I I didn't believe he's able to do but he is and what you see up here and what I'm going to show you is I'm going to show you 2022 2023 Walnut Street North Street Garage usage and what we're going to see is we're going to see some patterns the first pattern we have here is like look at what Walnut Street looks like so in the morning at like 7 AM we have about a 100 cars in there and overlaying the months there are two months that jump out there at the top that whose averag is obviously throw it off I think we all all probably know what two months those are that would be August when we have music Fest for 10 days and then the holiday season in December other than that it's remarkable how similar the graph is we have about 110 120 people in there at the beginning in the morning it goes up to about 300 or so at around 12 or one o'clock it comes down a little bit might dip just a little bit back up there at like six seven if people are coming out to to eat or hang out and then it goes back there to a little bit over a 100 once again 700 70 spots now the wall and Street Garage is paid off right now the new garage we're about to build is not paid off you need to pay the debt service on it so whether or not people were parking in the wall and Street Garage or not since we've PID The Debt Service off it was kind of like not good but it wasn't bad because we didn't have to find the money to pay for Debt Service that we didn't have so then also what I asked Steve to do was break out here between weekdays and weekend and you can see here the week the weekday as you could see is basically the same one I just saw the weekend is a is a little bit different it stays very low between like 100 and 200 till about 10: a.m. then it comes up and it Peaks at about 300 300 about one or so comes down a little bit and then levels off back back down and around meanwhile once again even at its peak times you're still looking at 400 some spots we're going to get to peak days in a second North Street it's even more office heavy if you can see here once again that gray and that green that you might see jumping out those are the only two months that are any different once again about 150 there in the morning give or take gets up a little bit over 300 those people disappear so for about looking here from about 8 AM or about 5:00 pm to about 8 am so that's 15 hours you're dealing with less than 200 people in that Park and garage so there's a lot of capacity there this is what North Street looks like on the weekends that makes sense right most people don't work work on the weekends so that's what that's what it looks like as far as weekday versus weekend once again I wanted to get the demand numbers here because I wanted to understand is there something that we're missing are we going to be able to see any type of Trends here as far as maybe we don't have a lot of people in the weekdays but then the weekends it becomes absolutely packed and that's not what we saw here's Walnut Street Garage in 2023 once again we got a couple we got a couple Peaks there that are a little bit uh a little bit higher there we had a couple great events in May got us up to about 350 375 we got our Music Fest obviously one of those green ones you can see the gray there at the bottom that was actually December because Mr fernstrom actually had started to had no choice but to close down parts of walner street so he was able to put some of those people in North Street so North Street had its biggest December ever um so by the way I did this the other day I walked like if you go from the midpoint of the Wallen Street Garage downtown to the corner of Maine and getter it's exactly 0.1 miles if you go from either the door that's on the Alley there on the first floor of North Street to that same spot it's exactly 0.1 miles if you walk from that same spot man and get or through and you want to go to am Lux and you want to go to the edge and you stop by there and you're parked on the second floor absent those stops at am Lux and Edge it's exactly 0.1 miles to the door there so it's exactly the same once again parking is psychological I understand that we might have thought that we would then see less people going there we have not as far as our numbers are concerned 2023 reaffirmed what we saw in 22 as far as Wall Street Garage usage North Street Garage usage you see there that gray is December because we had started to move people over there to make sure that they had a place to park but even at those peak times as we're gonna we're going to show you there were still plenty of spots there once again just North Street so taking those numbers before I get to music fist taking those numbers you see that these patterns are very similar there's only a couple couple events that necessarily can turn that can change that and that's when we bring a lot of people downtown for big events but what happens when people come downtown for big events is their behavior and their expectations change as well and what better way to test that than by Music Fest I went through and I pulled all the days for what I call peak times on peak days and the first important thing about peak times on peak days is the idea that like this doesn't mean on those days you had that many cars throughout the whole day this means that the peak 15 minutes so I put up there August 5th 8:15 to 8:30 there 6:36 that was the peak time during that Music Fest that you had that many cars and at that time you still had 389 cars open in the North Street Garage now you might be saying to yourself there's a 100,000 people walking around how can you have a 100,000 people walking around and there's and they're not parking in in the garages and the reason why is because when you have big events your parking expectation changes you might get dropped off you might get ubered you might carpool you might take Lanta you might take your bike you might walk down your parking expectation changed and I think we've all been there before it's like I got a spot and you're parked on like Seventh Avenue and you're like nine blocks away and you're like this is fantastic because your expectation has changed the other thing that we have proven here though is Mr fernstrom and the parking authority they're able to use other Lots when Walnut Street North Street Garage get busy so they're able to use the old old York lot they're able to use the Broad Street lot at times not during Music Fest or Celtic classic but they're able to use the Lehi Street lot they during um they right now are for the next couple years leasing some of the spaces down there at Spring Street so they're able to move cars around and what you see here is even with the largest outdoor music festival in the country with people walking around the streets with a loss of so much on street parking because Main Street is closed with and Church Street and Church Street is closed even with the loss of all that you still have all of these spots that are open because when things get busy the demand to come down I am not not coming down to Music Fest because I don't have a place to park I'm not coming down to Music Fest if it's raining I'm not coming down to Music Fest if I've been down three nights in a row and I should stay home I like I am gonna go to Music Fest or I'm gonna go to the Celtic classic or I'm gonna go to these events and I'm gonna show you the ones that aren't Music Fest in a minute no matter if I have a place to park or not you don't build a parking system for your 0. one examples that's the worst thing you could possibly do we've tried this in the 20th century with highways we've tried it with parking garages we've tried it with a lot of things and it has never worked and cities and states have left have been left to pay the bill now the other thing I did was I pulled all of the numbers here for the non-music Fest days so once again you can probably look at that you can probably guess what those events are we got three Celtic classic days on there September 23rd 22 24th 22 22nd uh uh 23 you got Mother's Day art show there May 13th and 14th and then you got a whole bunch of very busy holiday season days and on those days even though we obviously are occupied at Walnut Street and 500 occupancy cars by the way that's 65% full so I pulled all the 65% full days we still have hundreds and hundreds of spots left over at North Street Gage and it hasn't mattered to us now because on that left side that wasn't $45,000 a spot but once again you might think to yourself there were more people than that walking downtown on December 9th 2022 there probably were people's behavior changes when we when when we see this now what did I do you might say like okay well averages aren't you know what about those Peaks how do those work into the averages well we did here was I took the the peak time on every single day in um 2023 in Walnut Street and North Street so the peak on every single day so let's pretend it was January 29th of 202 three the peak in uh Walnut Street was 305 G uh cars in um uh North Street it looks like it was about 250 or so maybe 275 and you add those together and if you take all of the Peaks together even on the busiest times even on December and August you're still looking at almost 800 parking spots that are open in both garages now you might think to yourself well I want to build more parking because for those 0.1 days well that's great that's not how Debt Service works if you don't have those numbers being higher you don't have the people that are paying the revenues to pay off your debt service on these garages this is what the North Street occupancy looks like now as we said before obviously August and December are different days and I'm not going to tell you that Music Fest is not going to be a little bit more difficult this year or that we're not going to have to work to make sure we have an integrated parking system for those eight uh weekend days in December of 2024 we absolutely are going to but what I showed you before was that every month with the exception of August and December are about the same so when we look at January here we have about 475 this is with no no Walnut Street Garage I've been waiting and there have been a couple of people have suggested this I won't mention their names so they don't get attacked that they're like if this is what the numbers look like why do we need to spend $27 million in a new w Gage and I'm like definitely don't come on Monday like whatever you do like you don't want to come to the meeting on Monday I can sense by the silence that wasn't even funny so it is a situation where like there is all this vacancy but you can see that people and I think Steve tells me about 50 of this 50 to 60 of the spots around there Steve are being used in Spring Street correct obviously two different shifts but if you look here those people that were the overnight Parkers in the Wallner Street Garage have become the overnight Parkers in North Street those offic office workers in Walnut Street have gone down there into North Street so like once again it's only one month we're going to keep monitoring that but the system hasn't fallen apart in one month okay so what did that data show us about our North Street or north side parking system as we know as many of your customers know as you probably know if you drive a few blocks or drive a couple miles downtown on street parking continues to dominate our occupancy is about 80 to 85% and we're going to get back to how we're trying to increase that our off off off Street occupancy is about 45% our office workers provide most of the garage Parkers and garage use uses plummets after the workday completes we don't have those two shifts of parking because we don't have two shift shifts of people coming downtown so what did we do we looked at this question of can we increase on street parking because based on 2022 and 2023 data one on Street spot for visitors equals the occupancy of approximately three and a half garage spots for visitors so that means that one parking spot on say Market Street is three and a half times as popular as a garage parking spot I think that's probably consistent with what people think as far as their experience is concerned people would rather uh park on the street now you might be thinking to yourself but wait a second Willie if you're parking on your street it's a dollar and a half per hour and the garage it's it's an hour so yes I could have said that those on street spots are worth five and a half times what a garage street street spot is but that wouldn't be the intellectual thing to do so I worked into the idea that if you balanced out the idea that cost wasn't what you were looking for to help out that number for those of you that would like more garage parking it's still three and a half garage spots for visitors so one of the things that we did was we sat down with Mr fernstrom and Mr alcol who's been doing this for 25 years and we thought to ourselves is there anywhere that we can add on street parking in Downtown Bethlehem like is there any place that we're able to do it we did it years ago with angled parking on Main Street and people like parking there and what we were able to determine Mr alall if you really have a couple hours could sit down with you and tell you that he has essentially looked at this in every single corner of downtown over the past 25 years as the Public Works director what we've been able to determine is that in Spring of 24 we're going to be able to add 14 angled parking spaces to Market Street now if you know anything about parking you know that like the width of a parallel parking space is 7 feet but in angled space it's 9et and the and the length there I think in uh on the parallel spots are 22 feet but you only need like 18 or 19 feet in an angled angled spot which allows us the opportunity to be able to put these angled parking spots here so when we think about this idea that we can add 14 angled parking spots you're you're not just thinking about those as 14 spaces think about that as like 14 time three and a half as far as garage spaces are concerned that's like a that's like adding 50 garage spaces because people want to be able to park there what we did was we went through we take a we took a look at the engineering I did not go to school to become an engineer I've learned all sorts of about maneuverability and where you can put the center line and um you know sight lines and things like that Mr alol still tells me in that way that only Engineers could is like it might only be 13 it might not be 14 be careful about saying 14 publicly because of sight lines we haven't worked it out but the point is is like it's not that we're trying to cut parking we're trying to be smarter about parking we looked at we we're not moving anything there on New Street but another place that you're thinking about the potential be able to add angled parking now why is angled parking so good because a garage spot is $445,000 per spot to turn those 14 angled parking spots from parallel spots and to it's about $5,000 so if you want to take 14 divided by 5,000 versus 45,000 ends up being as one garage spot is about 130 times as expensive as what we're about to do there to be able to add 14 angled parking spots to places that people want to park that cost almost nothing that is closer to mainstream now we also take a look and this is going to be harder to do but I know people like all the information about the idea to do this down here on on Main Street there on the other when you take the when you go straight there on Maine when you're going um North and this is one that we're probably not going to be able to do but this is the type of thing that we investigate and take a look at and think is this something we're able to do you have to worry about pen. signalized um you know intersections and things like that this one is probably not going to work out they're still doing the engineering review but once again it's about how can we be sophisticated about parking now that number right there is 72,0 686 I don't know if anybody can guess what that is but population of bethleem says Mr Shire in what year oh a couple years ago 1970 so that was the 1970 Bethlehem census can anybody raise their hand if they were living or working in betham in 1970 S Jelly you were like one Mr spurk Mr folweiler a couple so we had about five people here was anybody can anybody raise their hand if they were in this room when they made the decisions about Wallen Street Garage in 1970 this is like the classroom people want to participate so I'm guessing that you were not and the moral of the story is is that in 1970 the people that were living in in in the city of Bethlehem made decisions that the rest of us have had to live with for 54 years those decisions made by people that were not us are ones that we have had to grow up in move to live through work through because of decisions that people made and that's fine that's the way this works but it also helps to explain about why we need to necessarily look forward so what are our downtown betham opportunities with our Wallen Street project and some of you have heard me talk about this before at different meetings it's an ability to fix our 19 1970s planning mistakes and avoid financially irresponsible decisions for taxpayers and Parkers build a new wall and Street Garage that improves safety and historical appropriateness increase the downtown vibrancy and sustainability with mixed use retail and residential development those those are what we look at as far as the opportunities for Walnut Street is concerned now one of the questions a lot of people have had is like why are these two projects on different timelines why can't you do the garage and the development portion on the same timeline it's a very legitimate question the conversation though up to this point has not allowed for this type of room and once again we thank city council for allowing us this opportunity to come and present to talk about this in 2021 and you can look there down at the bottom that was that study that laid out for the parking authority what the cost cost option options were for the Walnut Street Garage they had used a couple million dollars over the last eight years to keep it open but the emergency repairs will keep it open but at some point more intense repairs are needed we still have the study I have the the uh spreadsheet right here if anyone wants to take a look at it and after spending those $2 million in emergency repairs 2024 was the year that intense repairs are needed Mr fernstrom can talk more about this but the parking authority went from doing it quarterly or semi anually to essentially monthly reviews about what that thing needed to be able to keep open at some point in the last couple years it was determine that the emergency repairs are not going to be safe anymore once we hit January so that first 0 to 5 years just to keep it open for 2024 was going to cost a couple million dollars now the best time I think most people would agree for a garage demo will always be January if the goal is to minimize holiday season dupion disruption to one season to take down the wall and Street Garage and build anything back there whether or not you build it for 50 cars or 770 cars or 900 cars or 1100 cars like it's going to take you 19 20 months to be able to do so if we are looking at how do we make sure that you only miss one holiday season it's got to come down into January we definitely weren't ready we were nowhere close and Mr ferram didn't ask for it but we were nowhere close in January 22 or January 23 it wasn't ready it wasn't feasible so then the next logical question why not wait till January 2025 well as I just said per that repair schedule W the treat garage would have needed several million dollars they would have had to borrow new debt to create keep that garage open in 2024 also obviously the parking authority board and everybody else had already decided that they didn't want to spend 18 million over the next 20 years it was going to be throwing good money after bad if you knew it was going to be demolished in January 2025 okay second thing is the development portion has different questions to answer and they cannot and should not be rushed Miss Collins is going to talk about this this is a process that has been moving and will continue to move slowly because it is a very sensitive project we understand that like we in City Hall every day thinking about that there's no guarantee that that de development conversation is going to be done by January of 2025 it might not be it could be the goal is for it to be but there's not so the idea that we were going to somehow wait a year ask the parking authority to borrow money to take on new debt to be able to pay for these emergency repairs it just didn't make any sense you're never going to be able to build the two buildings and we ourselves and you might ask like well what's going to determine whether or not that's done by January 2025 the first thing is is if we're comfortable with what's being proposed if we think that it's something that we can support because if we're not comfortable nothing is coming forward nothing is it's just not going to happen we're never going to propose something that we aren't willing to get behind ourselves and we're certainly not going to rush that so the idea of borrowing several million dollars to keep that falling parking garage open that once CE again could be money spent on something else with a parking authority within the city just wasn't something we were going to do okay so couple more points then I'm going to turn it over now what I did here was I put together this collection of interests and I called it incomplete and I also put an alphabetical order because I've been doing this long enough is if I just put that in any order people would think whatever I put first was the thing I cared about the most so I put all of those things in alphabetical order to talk about how this decision is made and you may look up there and think like I think there's should only be one bullet point up there that I'm in one of these groups and that should be the most important priority and that's fine once again that's how democracy works but our job here is to balance all of these different interests together so we have to think about all of the different system Parkers and the areas of the city we need to think about the diverse and varied business interest which I'll get to in a second we're g we have to think about those future betham residents and businesses who aren't present yet I said good goodbye to Grandma and Leo before I left here and I told Grandma where I was coming and she said to me that it's it's weird that you're making a decision that has more to do with Leo's life than with your own life I wasn't sure how to take that but then I was just like okay but it's a good point it's the people that are coming after us that are going to start businesses that we at least need to think about as well housing Advocates and I know several people here on city council and members of the administration were at our fantastic housing meeting last um last week I don't see too many other familiar faces here but there was an opportunity for us to talk about what is going on with our housing crisis in our city and that housing crisis is not just about people that are on the lower end of the spectrum it's about every end we need High income housing we need middle income housing our vacancy rate is under 2% it is important for us so there's people that look at this and think to themselves like yeah putting some apartments close to Main Street is a good idea people who pay taxes I'm going to get to them in a minute um physical Arch architecture interest the harb once again they absolutely have a role they absolutely have an ability to make a recommendation the residents are buding the property I know I saw I saw Mr Nito and Dr Van W and I don't know if I saw Mr ramal the three houses there on Market Street it makes complete sense that they have very intense feelings on this I completely understand that and then also sustainability Advocates the climate action plan the Leo Valley Planning Commission people that advocate for us building these type of mixed use buildings in and around our downtowns that is an in complete list and once again you might think that there should only be one or two bullet points on there or maybe you think that we should number them maybe that's what I should have done one of those activities where you could like weigh in on which should be first and second but that's how democracy works that's what the purpose of this whole process is and our job is not to take one of those and say that's the most important one let's take everything else out our job is to balance all of those together now let's talk about that business Community diverse and varied interests now I know there are people that think that we should not build any smaller than 770 and I also know that there's businesses that you know send a letter with a chamber that they like the idea of mixed use this is completely consistent with everything else we've ever seen from our business community and that's fine because businesses want different things oftentimes people are like what what's the business Community want there is not one thing that I've learned over my 17 years that your small business Community wants and I just put together some of the lists there of of things that people have different opinions on how long should Parkers be able to stay at meters some people think six hours some people think three hours when should the authority stop charging for meters how much parking turnover should we encourage how should we create parking fine structures how do we feel about closing Main Street some people in this room love when Music Fest comes along some people don't some people around here love parklets some people don't some people like loading zones other people don't those different opinions on a wallnut street garage and the mixed use development reflect those diverse opinions and I can't tell you the way you should feel and if you feel one way or the other I'm not trying to persuade you what I am trying to say though is there is not one business Community opinion there never has been and there never will be because people are looking for different things okay so last thing I want to talk about and I finally watched the the harb the harb meeting and I just want to make sure I read something here in a second but the idea that the parking authority brought forward um a couple different submissions there for what they thought were the uh right amount of uh the right amount of parking and building so on and so forth so I'm not going to talk about submission one or submission two because I you know that's the conversation that's going to come up but I do want to talk about that third bullet point this idea of like this hypothetical rebuild of 770 spots now the reason I bring that up is because the what harb said to be able to gain their recommendation was theide idea that the applicant Revis the application's design with a building design that utilizes the entire existing site and matches the existing garage's footprint and height profile that's pretty clear to me that to get a positive recommendation requires a garage that looks like the garage that is there now which is 770 spots I actually think people that might not even agree with me agree with what Harbor's trying to do now City Council is going to make their own decision on what to do there with submission one or submission two either one of them is fine but we have to talk about that 35 million for a second because it's going to need the city of betham to back the debt now maybe you're having paying attention to this conversation and maybe the idea of you know putting the elevator at 78 feet or 72 feet or putting that at 50 feet or putting that at 57 feet isn't your thing but everybody in the city of betham all 75,000 people need to pay attention to the idea about how expensive a 770 parking garage would be starting with the idea that the parking authority reached out to their um financial adviser I'm just going to read this to to you is the authority has advised pfm that the increase cost to the construction cost based on the engineers would be about 8.4 million that's where I got the 35 I left off the 04 after considering the larger larger project size the approximate increase in total debt service paid for the larger project would be approximately $21 million over the life of the borrowings the annual Debt Service increase would be approximately $700,000 per year this would add significant financial pressure to the system that is not advisable and can cause concerns with lenders especially when parking demand studies support the smaller space garage financially this could only be feasible with a city guarantee in the repayment of the debt and pledging its taxing ability towards the debt repayment whatever my feelings were on the first three paragraphs the last sentence is the reason why I'm standing up here right now is because that is a very very very bad idea let's talk about how garages get financed the parking authority borrows $27 million so let's even say they they vote for that you could borrow $24 million under submission two whatever they essentially get a mortgage they have to pay back the principal plus the interest for 30 years the debt payments in the schedule which I got last week they start with $1.5 million and they rise to $2.4 million no parking deck is self-sustaining that has debt no parking deck is going to make one and a half million doll a year it's just not going to happen the Walnut Street garage permits plus the transient revenues in 2023 gave about $900,000 which means that the garage debt requires an additional $600,000 that isn't from Walnut Street Garage Now where's that money come from comes from the meters it comes from fines it comes from off street parking it comes from everything else in the parking system so the cost of that 770 deck is $21 million over the life of the debt which is $700,000 additionally a year well guess what the parking authority doesn't have that Revenue because they don't have the demand to park in their facilities so we would have to then guarantee the debt and that's everybody here that lives in the city of Bethlehem the city taxpayers become respons for the revenue if the parking system doesn't cover the debt there is a reason why Banks and capital markets are like we are cool with a 590 parking spot garage or a 527 parking spot garage because we have run your numbers we went through your audits we went through your financial system we did all of these things that are going to no bond holders gonna be like here's $27 million if you can't find a way to pay it back $35 million with that Debt Service they're like no no we don't trust you we need someone else to sign on the risk is too great for us I don't know if anybody here has ever co-signed a loan for somebody the percentage of people that obviously default on those is not good but what a bank is saying is like we don't trust the people that are asking for the loan to pay back themselves now if this was a private entity and all you had to lose was your own money that's your own decision but this is public money and this isn't the parking authority this is the city of Bethlehem having to be responsible for covering that debt if you've ever heard me talk about the budget you understand what we've done in the last nine years here we used to have about $170 million in debt we have aggressively paid it off the city of betham like a lot of other places had to take debt on during the betham steel days and the 2000s to be able to pay our cops pay our firefighters make our Capital expenditures thankfully between city council multiple administrations we've been able to pay down that debt so in the last nine years we've paid off $71 million but it doesn't stop there based on our current debt schedule paying out over the next four years we're going to get from $171 million to $56 million now why does that matter that matters is because the percentage of our general fund that is debt the smaller percentage you make that the more you're able to pay your police officers the more you're able to invest in Parks the more you're able to pave roads the more you're able to do everything that we like about living in the city of Bethlehem and you can't do that if your money is going to pay off debt look at the federal government look at what percentage our tax dollars go to pay pay off federal debt that stop them from helping people stop them from investing in the things that we want to that's our current annual Debt Service so for the next couple years we have that same like uh around $1 million payment but then it falls off a cliff during the last five six years we've been able to avoid any type of capital borrowings which have allowed us to put ourselves in this financial position that nobody else is in except for the city of Bethlehem because we've made these strong decisions and we've avoided making bad decisions and taking on debt that we could not pay and the last debt one I have and I'll be done about two minutes is look at our Revenue versus total debt over the past 10 11 years next year is going to be a huge year for us because we will have basically flipped that model and I talk to a lot of other Mayors I go to a lot of different things where we have conversations this graph is not what other cities have they have that debt maybe coming down a little bit they have revenues kind of stagnating they're like we got to raise our earned income tax to three or 4 per. but look at this we've been paying off debt because and if I don't know if you know this or not like we have two more years I think to pay off our landfill debt which was we took out in 1998 or 1999 so that was once again a decision none of us made 25 years ago and we're still paying off that debt so our ability here to pay off the debt be responsible between administrations and city council is turning into 2025 where for the first year we're going to have more Revenue than total debt which is not a situation that a lot of people are going to have so the last thing about the debt piece and the 35 million is that if this is not something that you care about high how high the garage is all 75,000 people should they like it should scare the Daylights out of them thinking of us guaranteeing debt that there is no demand to pay for as I said before this is how Scranton went bankrupt Harrisburg had similar problems you look around people sell their parking garages you've heard me say before there are decisions other cities made like when Allentown sold their water and sewer department that we've never even had to consider because we're in a healthy financial position it's by avoiding making decisions like that so to finish just the principles in review and then I'm going to turn over to th and Mr Fon our parking system has a lot of expensive unused parking it's about to become more expensive when we take off take on debt unused parking creates dead space in a vibrant downtown overbuilding the new waln garage would have a negative effect in the finances of the taxpayers the BPA our DBA Southside Arts District and likely the city taxpayers a second time that's the debt default if the parking authority can't pay it back the first time is just affects our own Bond rating which affects our own interest rate and things like that taking on their debt and we have an opportunity to fix these mistakes of urban renewable sustainable and historically appropriate Urban Development that will enhance our downtown for the next 50 years there's obviously a lot to talk about here and we wanted this opportunity to be able to lay all of it out and like I said people around here have very legitimate opinions that I am not going to say are wrong but we are just committed to trying to do the right thing going forward not just for us but for all of the people that come after us so with that being said I'm gonna turn over Mr F thank you yeah Mr frrom before you start I just wanted to say that like this was supposed to be a comprehensive meeting for all of us so as such we're going to wait for any Council comments till the end of the entire presentation um but I am aware that we are an hour into this and I want to make sure that we have time for public comments so if you can proceed at a healthy clip that would be much appreciated thank you uh thank you Mr uh thank you mayor Reynolds good evening vice president Leon members of council I want to express my gratitude for welcoming us here this evening to talk about this intricate project before diving into the procedural aspects of our submissions I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the transformational Journey of the parking authority over the past several years the Strategic positioning of the authority has empowered us to provide robust imper iCal data facilitating informed datadriven decisions crucial to our recent right sizing and planning exercise for the new garage upon assuming my role in 2019 my vision was to instill a data-driven decision mindset in the day-to-day operations and strategic goals of the parking authority however our initial challenge was the inadequacy of our Legacy systems in generating the high level data needed for a seamless transition to a datadriven operation as 2019 evolved into evolved into 2020 the pandemic further redirected our Focus towards navigating unprecedented challenges in 2021 with unwavering support from our board of directors we embarked on a comprehensive transformation of the business this involved a responsible and methodical conversion of our equipment and systems to prioritize technology and customer convenience new gated systems were installed in all of our garages offering various idolf free payment options in alignment with our sustainability goals we introduced multiple forms of payment options including I'm sorry multiple forms of monthly Parker credentials including license plate recognition mobile app and Bluetooth additionally we provided diverse validation options to local businesses through webbased portals static tablets kiosks and a web-based e-commerce site for online permit purchases crucially these changes facilitated the capture of real time and historical data through dashboard platforms and Reporting options now integrated into our everyday business decisions subsequently we implemented new per permitting and enforcement software this implementation not only provided real time and historical data but it also guided Us in making better decisions regarding the deployment of team members and addressing parking challenges the enhancement also included an e-commerce web-based platform for customer transactions reducing the need for office visits the wealth of data produced allows us to conduct weekly meetings in committee groups to review data and Trends enabling us to make informed decisions for instance using data from the mobile app provider deployed in 2020 we implemented mobile only app zones throughout the city when a block face reaches a transactional threshold for mobile payments the zone is retrofitted to mobile only which in some instances results in higher payment compliance and a lower ticket picking rate which is always our goal simultaneously starting in 2021 efforts were directed towards strengthening our financial policies we established a capital reserve fund operating fund and investment policies providing strict guidance for responsible operation while keeping fishare responsibility in mind as acknowledged by pfm our financial adviser in 2022 memo I quote The Authority has been able to secure competitive and attractive financing from a local bank which demonstrates a voter confidence in the long-term Financial Health of the authority initially when the 2015 B Bonds were issued for the South New Street Garage The Authority required a back stop of the city when entering the capital markets to help make sure it achieved the most efficient cost of capital now thanks to a track record of solid financial performance and strong leadership The Authority is now able to enter Capital markets based solely on its own Revenue pledge without the back stop of the the city the financial Independence of the authority is a testament to the actions taken and the policies put in place by the authority over the last number years to put itself in the position it is today as the authority continues to consider parking projects Beyond just the PK Street Garage this financial Independence will allow the authority to contribute towards further Economic Development and infrastructure improvements more directly in the city of Bethlehem this was drafted in 2022 but I feel it complements the memo that mayor Reynolds read earlier that good decisions made over the past several years allows us to be in this good financial position the parking Authority's Journey over the past few years has been one of technological transformation and and adaptation the strides made in technology integration and financial responsibility have positioned us well for the challenges ahead and have especially positioned us well for the Wall Street Garage project as mayor Reynolds alluded to in late 202 2021 after the board's public vote to demolish and replace the garage the BPA engaged with th to assist with a comprehensive site feasibility study with the goal of understanding the right size of a new garage through extensive parking data analysis the potential development yield from the right sizing exercise and the assistance of creating a development RFP for any remaining land in parallel to understand what's best for the parking needs of the entire city and recognizing the Project's sensitive nature we have consistently embraced a transparent and accommodating approach during these past two years as a feasibility study was active we have proactively engaged with the public on numerous occasions including meetings with members of harb to review each of submissions in the weeks before each meeting conducting over 21 over 20 one-on-one meetings and discussions with adjacent Property Owners hosting multiple group discussions at the betham parking authority with neighboring Property Owners participating in one-on-one dialogues with members of the business Community speaking at downtown Bethlehem Association board meetings which I'm a member of discussing the project at downtown Bethlehem Association bi-weekly Merchant meetings meeting with leaders of Arts quest in Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce to discuss the project participating in a downtown business community meeting hosted by the DBA and facilitated by mayor Reynolds and myself I believe over 40 people attended that somewhere in this room hosting a public parking displacement plan meeting at the high place attending three harb meetings I think actually s it's four four harb meetings and one city council meeting hosting a meeting at the betham park and Authority conference room with the director of community and economic development Laura Collins welcome approximately 20 members of the Bethlehem historic Association to gather their feedback and provide them an opportunity to ask questions many who are here now where they for the two hours that on that evening on Wednesday November 29th explaining the project and providing them with an opportunity to ask direct questions since 2020 the Walnut Street garage has been an agenda item on 23 BPA public board meetings that's 23 times in 36 months spanning two administrations these agenda items have included numerous condition reports the final review study recommending the BPA demolish and replace a garage which the board voted on feasibility study RFP approvals feasibility study contract approvals feasibility study results demolition design and construction contract approvals Project funding approvals and general project updates all this historical background underscores our commitment and thrownness to this project we have not only been diligent in collecting data but also attentive to the diverse interests of both the downtown community and the public while it's impossible to satisfy everyone we have made Earnest efforts to gather feedback comprehensively and integrate as many perspective as possible our aim in developing a parking structure that effectively meets the city needs while remaining financially viable has led us to propose submission one submission one achieves an impressive equilibrium of incorporating a diverse range of perspectives it adeptly integrates historical elements appropriately sizes the facility for present and future growth considers height considerations introduces retail space and infuses vibrancy on the other hand submission 2 captures similar aspects such as vibrancy walkability and the integration of historical components however it adjusts the balance following feedback from harb reducing height and compromising on parking space count I extend my gratitude once again for allowing us to discuss this project and I'm excited to hand it over to Jim Zulo Kevin carrian and Mike app from th as Architects engineers and designers they will lead us through the submissions shedding light on how the site holds a potential for enduring vibrancy and how the garage footprint achieves optimal efficiency and cost Effectiveness they will also delve in the meticulous measures taken to prevent the dominance of an entire city block as is the current situation while seamlessly incorporating bethlehem's distinctive features into a new design thank you thanel can we take comments before we move on to this no we're g w here for an hour and a half already I know that's why I asked I asked Mike we can not spend two hours going over the past and he assured me he was going to do that and now we're an hour and I'm just saying oh good evening and thank you for the opportunity to be here my name is uh Jim Zulan the president of th Consulting with me is car Kevin carrian who is our director of engineering and our project manager here on uh this project and then mike gap our director of architecture um I'm just I'm going to be very brief because I know it's been a lengthy presentation but uh a couple things that I'd like to just indicate um you know we our firm Works throughout mostly the East Coast we have offices up and down the east coast and we are nationally recognized as a parking Consulting design firm and Nationwide most communities are looking how to build less parking you know I'm a certified planner uh by by education and um you know many communities throughout this country are actually eliminating parking requirements with the hope of doing more development that is pedestrian friendly vibrant and re uh you know kind of reactivating a lot of their areas in in downtowns that said I'm uh I am a parking consultant I was formerly the director of the New Brunswick Parking Authority so I sat on Steve's side of the table where I understand the business communities concern residents concerns about having adequate parking to support Economic Development and and existing businesses so when we embarked on this study in 2022 uh you know we had no preconceived notions about how much parking was needed or available and that type of thing but what I can tell you is that the North Street garage and the Walnut Street Garage as the mayor indicated was about 75% of the parking in the study area that we looked it wasn't just those garage it was the on street parking there was about I think about 290 on Street spaces Plus plus a couple surface slots in the area and what we did discover uh in 2022 in April that there was over 800 space not just then we also talked to Steve and based on his new access Revenue control system in both garages where you can monitor realtime occupancy we looked at it not not only in April but then in September and then in February up to February 23 and these numbers remain consistent so we OD though that the world was still kind of coming back from the covid impact while I believe that as our latest counts a lot of the resident I mean the kind of retail activity was back you know restaurants were strong and I'm talking about a year ago that a lot of the office Community was still you know in flux a little bit so you know and that that debate goes on we don't know if we'll ever know is it we're going to go hybrid remote you know people coming back we do kind of feel that there is a stabilization now but I'm not wouldn't sit here and tell you that things won't change I think a very resounding information is the fact that with the closure of the Walnut Street Garage the permit Parkers the office Parkers predominantly or employee parking and overnight residents and things like that there is still within the North Garage a couple hundred vacant spaces on your typical regular day during Peak but let me just tell you what we did to project future demand because it's not only about what exists today but it's what exists you know five to seven years out beyond that I think it's it's not totally accurate but we did adjust so in our study area and and in the I'm going to use some round numbers about 2,000 spaces again of which the north garage and this wellnut Street Garage compos about 75% of that in that time when we did our counts during typical days and I want to make it clear we don't count on events we don't count during the holiday season we don't count during the summer because that's when parking demand typically comes down here because your Festival goes up so but what we did is we took a typical days and we then got data from Steve and when we count we actually counted the parking garage we didn't rely on on the data we walked it we counted the cars we did that all through the downtown or our studier we then applied and we came up to about half of the spaces of the total inventory of about 2,000 spaces in your study area which again was north of um you know north of the North Street Garage uh it went down to Market Street little you know extended a little further south onto Main Street but we found back then that there was about half of it being utilized and again I know that may not seem like it is because on street parking I just like the mayor indicated on street parking was always very occupied but the garages were not often times half empty each one of them but what we did to adjust for the future is we added we envisioned that there would be another 346 Parkers there about based on maybe more office coming back maybe more you know activity then we Pro propose normal growth we look at census data looked at the growth of the downtown looked at the growth surrounding areas and said there's going to be some growth associated with that and then we looked at Future projects that may happen in this area we we met with the economic development folks here we looked at projects like the boy departments and I think two or three other projects the one that may be contemplated for the site adjacent to the the proposed garage we came up with a total number of about we need about 1,800 spaces in this area so let me just look at the numbers so you're right now the current Supply is over a little over 2,000 um we did indicate that one of the projects being built in the future is going to have a minimum amount of parking like 75 spaces but then you're taking out the displaced um Walnut Street Garage and then we Pro provide a cushion so we looked at the total Supply being about 1,300 spaces and that when we add the Walnut Street the new Walnut Street back garage back in of about 520 to 580 depending on what option that there is adequate parking for people coming back from Co if they do I personally think things are very stabilized and it depends what article you read lately also you know another almost 400 spaces for new development that may you know I know the boy she projects underway that may or may not occur but then we also want to look at contingencies so um couple other assets that are out there the mayor talked about some on street parking we looked at the Spring Street lot has a lot of available parking the Lehi lot and a couple others and the other thing was the Broad Street lot and if you know the area because we have to look in the area how much development is realistic to take place and this we didn't do on our own we talked to the city Economic Development folks and but if there was a need for more parking the Broad Street lot is an Excell opportunity for either a garage or some other mixed use development in the future if it is needed if a lot of the development that we anticipate happening does happen so with that um I'll be available for questions but I want to hand it off to our our folks here to talk about the project itself and let me if I could just before I hand it over one of the things we looked at sighting of the facility was we are very focused in our business about efficiency can you pull the microphone back toward you thank you parking garages as has been referred to are very expensive you know and it is our job as experts to make it as efficient as possible as cost effective as possible basically making sure that every square foot of the garage can be utilized and what happened with the old Walnut Street Garage was like the planning in the 1970s urban renewal they were warehouses for cars that was their intent today we look at them as a Gateway people coming to your downtown area want a nice parking experience you know and that's not what's taking place presently and so we've really put a lot of effort into not only making this efficient but making it you know attractive and and I guess you know Bea is in the eye of the holder obviously but um that's what we'll explain now so good evening uh my name is Mike app I'm a director of architecture with th um and I wanted to uh quickly explain how we developed our concept for the for the facade of the garage um th Consultants analyze the architecture of Bethlehem as well as review of zoning requirements that you have in place um and also the guidelines set by the Secretary of the Interior for historic building since we are in a historic district and began our concepts for the architecture of the proposed Wall Street Garage which you see here um through the use of proportion and Rhythm and scale we have strived to create uh a facade that respects the character of the historic District um and in some cases we've um even give given little hints I believe on uh you know the flavor of Bethlehem uh manifesting here what you see in the form with massing uh material and texture patterns and articulation of the facade with the windows and doors um and we also believe that um it's an economical solution um as well as being one that is is sensitive with its detailing so um so if I may I would like to just quickly walk through what you see in front of you but you are looking at the Wall Street Garage so this would be our commercial facade and the building does have two stair Towers to it the stair tower on the left is what you see that has a vertical slice of glass um and then that also immediately to the right has the portal for the vehicles to enter and exit then you have another section of the building which uh between column lines six and four which is where the the ramp primarily is within the garage and you see at that base level you see some decorative uh fencing type of structure happening there and then between column lines four and two we transition again to more of a retail type of facade uh and then again between two and one you have the lobby for the actual garage and the second St stair Tower which would be the one that has the elevator which is why it's a little larger in shape so one of the things that we've tried to do because and this is very typical of garages because garages are big structure and so one of the ways that we've tried to break that down is horizontally um while it is uh you know much smaller than the existing one it's we're only at 278 feet instead of 500 U we've still tried to break this down into smaller pieces which is why you see something that is really a collage of of really four different facades happening here within the one facade so it looks like it's multiple buildings happening here which is more typical of the proportion that you see in an old historic type of town and then the other thing that we've done is to try to break it down vertically because again we know that is a uh you know a six tier garage as planned and so one of the things that we've done and looking at the uh guidelines that are set by harb is to really focus focus on this pedestrian base that's something that we would do anyway as a firm we do this in most of our projects where we try to activate the street by by really creating more of a pedestrian Zone and so that's what you see occurring here where there's really more of this base piece again where you see that uh ornamental uh fencing that's occurring on the one portion and then where you have the storefront occurring on the other portion um and all of that then capped by a cornice and then you have the upper portions of the garage which become a little simpler um have a little uh less articulation to them and then finally you have a roof line which varies in height and also in a little bit of change in materiality as well um the images across the top just to explain them show what we uh think may be some of the materials that would be appropriate for you based on what we see with the rest of the building inventory in Bethlehem so there would definitely be some type of brick there'll be uh potentially some type of roof material that could be standing seam obviously glass the main uh material of the garage is is a pre-cast material but that will again be clad in in uh primarily clad in in the brick or something that we feel is appropriate fact simil that okay um that that previous slide was our main commercial Corridor again along there Walnut Street but uh this building has a couple other facades that can be seen so this is the East Side um and as we turn that corner then we continue to sort of simplify that that Design This is a cost savings measure but also it's more appropriate as we move around the building to become a little more quiet and so what you're seeing here is uh again you've got that pedestrian base coming around the building uh with that ornamental fencing and then the upper portions of the building there again being more quiet um being more more of a solid type of of uh wall structure there partially as a response in code because we're uh very close to the adjacent property line but also and you'll see this on the next slide we're trying to respect the neighbors uh as a residential district so we don't have things like headlights and so on coming out of the garage into those folks homes this is the South facade then and at the moment what we're considering is that this is somewhat of a garden wall type of structure um so that is why what you see here again we continue to bring that pedestrian base around similar to the existing one that has a brick wall that is a little over 30 feet our pedestrian base is continuing to bring that that sight line down because we want to continue to bring the scale down so our brick base there is a little over 20 feet um and then we have more of a neutral type of building that occurs above that so that's why the colors become lighter um and there is a little bit of detailing there just so that you have some interest to that wall um and not just a plain wall but it really U as a whole is meant to be much quieter bringing the the vertical scale down still breaking it up horizontally um so that we don't have just this really uh you know something that appears to be very long good evening I'm Kevin carrian with th thanks again for having us uh T tonight I'll be talking about the the sighting of the garage I'll talk about the intern footprint of the garage and how the garage functions and then I'll get get into the height of the garage and some comparisons of the existing Walnut Street Garage compared to the proposed garage um this is a a site plan layout showing Walnut Street to the north um the the new garage is in yellow on the right side of the plan and the development site is to the to the left um when we after completing our parking study and we determined the number of parking spaces needed we started at laying the garage out trying to achieve the most amount of spaces in the given footprint so maximizing the parking efficiency uh we also looked at level of service with within the garage so basically creating user comfort as as people are driving in and out of the garage people are getting out of their cars going to the stair elevator Towers making sure we do achieve a high level of service we also look at the length of the garage uh the existing Walnut garage is is close to 500 ft long uh so just in that you need to make very long driving movements to circulate up through the garage to find a space and then come back down to exit the garage um so we we selected a shorter site and in doing that we don't need to deal with a A through building expansion joint uh the existing Walnut Street Garage has a a full building expansion joint that that adds initial construction cost and it also increases long-term maintenance cost um our layout also uh provides for a great development opportunity to the West these are some examples of of th garages and we're mainly showing these to identify the standard length of a garage that we're designing um so all all the the longer length of all of these garages is less than 300 feet uh so the the the length of the garage is the first number shown for example the upper leftand corner that garage is is 238 ft long um these are more garages and these These are typically in the the 300 to 3 maybe 60 to 70 feet long and a lot of these garages are are built on sites that have adjacent development uh next to them um the garage in the upper leand corner is down in Miami and that has office space adjacent to it uh the the garage in the upper Center has a residential wrap around the garage this is uh a graphic basically showing the link the the street Frontage length of various garages both in Bethlehem as well as Allentown and you can see here that the first line there is the existing Walnut Street Garage which is close to 500 feet long but you can see when we when we compare all the other garages they're they're roughly 200 feet long maybe a little bit less and if if I could just add the purpose of that is that the intent is to really minimize the footprint of Gage the parking is not the highest and best use of your valuable land in downtown Bethlehem so part of it is how to make the most efficient Garage in footprint and leave other area for other beneficial [Music] uses these are the the first two floor plans of the garage uh the lower plan here is the ground tier plan um and there's basically a brake line through the center of the garage because the the western side or the left side of the site is lower compared to the Eastern side if uh if you're familiar with with Walnut Street it basically slopes from from right down to the left um so as as we're looking at this plan there's there's condo parking in the lower leftand corner of the the lower plan here and that serves uh the condos on on Market Street uh there's also the main stair over elevator Tower shown in the upper leand corner which is in a light blue color then we have roughly 3,000 square feet of retail space um and then back a house space the the upper plan is is the the second tier plan but the right side of this plan actually aligns with Walnut Street so the the the vehicles will come off of w Walnut Street in the upper right hand corner of this plan make a right-and turn and go up the ramp and circulate through the garage uh this is a blow up of the the retail space in the the northwest corner of the garage as I mentioned we have roughly 3,000 square feet allotted for retail space this could be used for one tenant or or multiple tenants so we have flexibility there and then there's back of heal Space trash room receiving room and then some utility room U sprinkler room and so forth in in the back there um the upper leftand corner shows the the two elevators uh facing Walnut Street so there'll be glass back elevators so as you're rot in those cars you'll be able to see out people from outside will be will be all see you so that's a p passive security measure that we Implement in most of our garages um and these are the plans circulating up through the garage the isometric diagram is shown on the right and that kind of shows the the functional layout and ramping system within the garage one point to make the the the floor is flat on the Walnut Street garage so that allows us to to use that flat surface to create uh the architectural look that Mike was explaining earlier so you won't see the the ramps going through the the openings U one point I'd like to make is this is an enclosed garage based on code so that means we don't have natural ventilation um as Mike mentioned he he walked the north facade has openings that he showed the East facade it had appears to have openings but they're actually solid U the South facade is totally solid and the West facade is solid so since we can't have natural ventilation we have to introduce mechanical ventilation as well as sprinklers throughout the garage so that they're just life safety measures uh that we need to implement I just want to add some context here uh the parking authority did a a analysis to determine the the height of various other buildings within the close to the existing garage um so the these uh little bullet points here show various buildings that are above roughly 60 feet or above um these are some of the buildings along Main Street um some more of the buildings along Main Street and then the the existing Walnut Street Garage is shown there on the the right hand side that's the the Northwest stair Tower of the Walnut Street Garage which is roughly 71 feet tall now I'd like to get into a height comparison of the existing garage compared to the the proposed garage this uh elevation shows an outline of the existing Garage in red and the proposed garage is in blue um so the the existing garage is very long as you can see 478 feet 8 Ines there compared to the new garage which is only 278 feet long um to to create a height comparison we're we use the zoning ordinance to determine that the average height of the building so using the definition in the zoning ordinance we calculated the the height average height of the existing building is roughly 51 feet and the height of the proposed building is 64 feet so roughly a 13t increase um and this this shows the dimensions looking at the leth hand side of this you can see the existing garage the stair Tower is roughly 45 feet 2 in um and the new stair Tower will be 75 feet2 inches so roughly a 30 foot increase at that specific location um next this is the the South facade uh facing the the residential home to the South uh very similar analysis here where we uh compared the average height of the existing garage to the new existing garage is 46 feet and the new garage is roughly UH 60 feet so roughly close to a 14 foot increase this is a rendering of the South facade um next I'll be going through and and using sight line analysis to show how the South side will be visible from West Market Street to the South uh the next series are are photos uh taken from West Market Street uh starting from the the east side and and walking West um the the plan diagram in the upper leftand corner uh there's a sight line shown in green so that's the actual sight line that we we see here the the snapshot in the lower leand corner shows the exist in garage dimension in red and the proposed Garage in blue um so it's hard to see but in between the two houses there the the top of the existing garage is the line is shown in red and the proposed garage is in blue so the the existing or the the both garages can be seen between the buildings uh but not over the buildings you can slightly see the the bank of the 165 foot tall Bank of America building in the upper right hand corner of this photo but that kind of gives you a con context of scale um you know that building is a very tall building 165 ft and it's not visible um so very similar analysis just working West as as we walk down the street um in line with the the photos we develop these scaled sight line diagrams so these are are section cuts through the new garage and through the the residential homes to the sale and the on the right hand side there's a person standing on the sidewalk on the south side of of West Market Street looking so this show the red line represents the the sight line and you can see that that you cannot see uh the proposed garage above the the residential homes um one thing to mention the upper upper diagram here the stair Tower uh on the the north side of the new garage is shown in Gray and this diagram also shows that the the stair Tower projects slightly above the main floor of the garage will not be seen from West Market Street these are uh just continue to to work Westward on uh West Market Street looking through the two homes um and more Seline diagrams I'll let Mike talk about the architectural facade further so this bird's eye view again is giving you the idea of what that garage is going to be and how it fits into the context with uh the 165 foot building there to the left uh the shorter building here on the front giving us that Walnut Street Corridor um and you can see the residential homes then to the right or to the South um and then U just for clarification because we don't have a lot of information at the moment about what's happening to our West that's what that the white box is just undefined at this moment neither do we um so here we're looking at the smaller uh stair Tower again and the vehicle portal um and we can keep going um and this is looking more at that residential sorry the retail base uh so you can see on the right hand side there's entry points into what would be those actual retail spaces um the one in the center here we felt like could be a a possibility for some type of public art we don't know what that is yet at this point uh but we thought there'd just be some opportunity to create something different again along the sidewalk and then this image uh is really more focused right on the entry into the lobby which would be where you'd get the uh you'd access the elevators for the garage again sort of our overall snapshot of what the facade look like you can see how you know the garage is also responding to the grade it's higher on the left and lower on the right so that was just our our first submission to harb um at that first meeting we received comments uh regarding the height of the garage and we came back with submission two um so the the submission to garage is similar um are basically the same exact functional layout the same exact facade we just reduce the backs side of the garage by one level um so I won't go through every slide here I just want to touch on the height difference this is a architect the rendering um and the blue line represents the submission one height compared to submission two height um same thing here blue is uh submission one compared to the rendering showing submission two and the same so we're basically reducing the southern face of the garage by roughly 10 feet or one level uh another high comparison Slide the the blue is submission one and the the pink or the purple is a submission two um same thing here basically reducing the the backside by roughly 10 feet um and here's a rendering showing uh existing Garage in red dash line the submission one height is the white line and then the the r actual rendering shows the submission to height and then we did very similar sight line analysis um and we just added the additional line there to to show submission to height um this slide was just basically to show we we were talking about the the main sterile a towers of the garage and they're just a they are the tallest elements of the garage but they're a very small percentage of the the building facade so for example the East staircase is only four% of the building length uh the West staircase is uh roughly 7% and only visible from W Street yes only visible from Wall Street yes so again I think uh as Kevin just mentioned you can see how especially on the uh the right hand side which would be the South and at the far top which would be the East End you can see how the garage is shorter um to to respect uh another level of of reduction if you will to respect those uh homes to the South thank you like to thank you very much thank you all right thank you very much uh you know though my primary emphasis is on parking um and essential infrastructure crucial to the well-being of our downtown we recognize that this project transcends more than just parking uh the BPA is exceptionally fortunate to have a very strong working relationship with the city and the city Administration sharing common goals and objectives concerning the downtown area uh the city has proven to be an exceptional partner throughout this project diligently assessing the broader Community impact in considering other critical components such as vibrancy resoning livability and planning this strategic collaboration has allowed us to effectively navigate the complex elements associated with economic development by tapping into their knowledge and in insights so with that I'm happy to turn it over to Darlene heler and this is the the last portion of the presentation so between just Darlene and I talking about the development portions um that's that's the end of the agenda and I would once again ask you to keep it to a healthy clip I just know that questions are going to come up that I would I know that other council members would like to look into over the next week so we have sufficient answers for our next meeting so and I can be very brief thank you um thank you um for your for your patience um so much has already been said tonight about good planning and good design and the history of how we got here and um on this slide we have a list of the um planning principles or policies that we're really able to uh work toward with this full redesign of the site and one thing that um we sort of collectively did was um we went through some of the planning documents that we have created in the last say 20 25 years to just kind of show that this is really the kind of project that we have been trying to incentivize and create um plans and ordinances to support for a very long time um we did our comprehensive plan in uh 2009 based on Smart growth principles so we increased density in the downtown Corp we increased opportunities for mixed use and good design in 2009 the city also created created the city liable the walkability study is typically what that's referred to and it's referred to quite often and I I've actually highlighted quite a few things on in my notes to uh show how uh this project is compatible with the walkability study but just I'll just point out one thing the Walnut Street Garage and that Corridor is called out as the prime example of what not to do for a walkable Community it has a long blank wall no storefronts um no amenities on that quarter um clearly someone from out of our area came in objectively uh was able to see that this quarter doesn't work and we're able to reactivate this quarter with this project so that it really does work for pedestrians um for um well on on many levels I'll keep going um we also did a historic preservation plan in 2009 there was some discussion already about urban renewal and some acknowledgement within this plan that the city of Bethlehem was really one of the communities that was able to turn that tide pretty early so we see some damage from urban renewal in our downtown but it was a very short period and um in uh 1961 we were the First Community in the state of Pennsylvania to have a local ordinance historic district and um that was turned around in 1979 with a new downtown plan so I I think one thing that the city's been blessed with for many years is visionary leadership I really do we've um had a common vision and I think at this point I think there's a common vision for the kind of community and downtown that we want to see in 2012 we adopted a new zoning ordinance again dener downtown so that we can save some of our environmentally sensitive areas and the outlying areas greater mixed juice downtown um we also created the requirement that in the in the downtown cores we need to have um commercial on the first floor that was not a requirement previously uh in the very core of the city retail restaurant and personal service on some of the outlying quarters um uh a commercial space but um it's an acknowledgement that we need to activate the street for pedestrians and uh to match the the way that buildings historically developed in our downtown the vision zero plan talks about obviously pedestrian safety uh we are able to really reactivate this quarter in a way that does make it safer for pedestrians we'll be removing the left turn Lanes narrowing the cart ways widening the sidewalks we'll be adding Street trees we'll be upgrading the lighting um the north side alive neighborhood plan also talks about the public realm and the kinds of um amenities that we need in our public spaces to create and activate uh um more uh commercial um vitalization I guess we also talked about um on the front of this not it's not actually defined at this point but there could be some opportunity for uh rotating public art or other things that can be designed and lay it out more specifically um with the public as the project moves forward but it is something that we want to be conscious about our wayfinding and signage plan was also done that year I think someone noted that um a parking garage really is a gateway and our wayf finding and signage plan notes that people come into the city we want you to park once and we'll help you navigate through our downtown as a pedestrian as a bicyclist via transit whatever else um might be available in our core we looked at um LV PC's plan the future LV the regional plan um I have highlighted quite a bit that um is in their plan that supports this project I'll just call out um one of the things um which is pretty consistent with with our plans as well but we need more mixed juice we need more density in our downtown cores that's how we do Farmland preservation and everything else that they want to uh support in a regional basis um and it talks about providing a variety of attainable housing in locations that maximize social and Economic Opportunity for everyone and we do believe that the private project um uh Laura will talk about that will will support that a new opportunity for housing in 2021 the climate action plan um was adopted by the city there's a couple of sections of that that um are pertinent here the transportation and Mobility section specifically talks about decreasing parking of course it also talks about getting people out of their cars and walking and biking but specifically it talks about decreasing parking in land use and green space again there are um highlighted sections about uh compatible mixed juuse compact development and opening doors is our most recent uh plan that was adopted by the city the strategic housing plan I know you're all familiar with that basically it says we need more housing um so these are the um planning policies that we are really trying to uh move forward with this project we're right sizing the parking footprint we have a more interesting Corridor to complement Main and Broad we can increase foot traffic business opportunity and the vibrancy of the block we improve pedestrian safety and we calm Trav traffic there's much needed residential opportunity right in our downtown Corp and we can imp improve the pad Aesthetics on that block for um the uh opportunity within our historic district uh and also just um we've been talking about a wide range of things related to the garage but at your first meeting in February you'll be looking at some very specific things um we're proposing to vacate a portion of the street um it was also reviewed by fire DPW for safety Provisions it does calm the traffic it does create some opportunity for pedestrian safety uh supported by lvpc uh and also we had our um City's traffic consultant take a look at that and was supported by the city's traffic consultant as well there's a zoning map change really it's just to clean up the um the fact that this commercial parking garage sits in a commercial district and also in a residential zoning District I can't think of other situations in the city where a specific lot would straddle different zoning districts so we're really just cleaning that up it's pretty um pretty straightforward and then the final thing is the COA and and that's been talked about a little bit um too the motion uh from the uh harb meeting was that the recommendation was to revise the applicant's design with a building design that utilizes the entire existing site and matches the existing garage's footprint height profile calling specific attention to building scale height width form Etc um we've tried to show I think that we've been pretty clear that the garage that's there right now really doesn't work it's antiquated it's obsolete it it's not good design it's not the way we would design or plan today um and so we have a new way of uh looking at land use and the efficiency of how we're going to use our land in the downtown core so um hopefully uh we've been able to to to make that argument but I think this is a great opportunity for really revamping that that space in a more successful way thank you and Laur now is going to talk about um the remaining portion of the site to the west and I will be brief but I appreciate the opportunity um to talk about that Western portion uh where we are um currently what has happened so far what has not happened and you know what we can expect in the future as it relates um to to that to that Western half of the site um you know these are two different projects they're on different timelines as the mayor mentioned for the reasons that the mayor mentioned um but I but I do want to take the opportunity which feels appropriate here and not so much um you know previously when we were more limited in our conversation but just take the opportunity to talk about um as Miss hel mentioned what the background is in thinking about City Planning and then in thinking about this site in particular and how we got to this concept of um having you know mixed use where you've got uh retail restaurant uh residential as well as parking in the in the adjacent portion um and the mayor and Miss seller did talk about some of that history some of the past planning um how that has included mixed use development over many years so I'm not going to belabor the point but um the emphasis is on the thought and research and Analysis uh over many administrations and parking authority directors that has gotten us um to where we are with both the garage and then the mixed use development um concept cep as an overall Vision um for the site I really think that the vision that we're laying out is just a continuation of what leaders in the city of Bethlehem have really hoped for and been building toward for a long time in the downtown you know since we reopened Broad Street um and have been working on infield development in the downtown have been not only um prioritizing revitalizing uh and and continuing the um vibrancy of the two blocks Main Street but also you know what can we do on Broad what can we do on Walnut Street how can we leverage what we have in that two Block Main Street District that is so excellent how do we leverage that for continued growth um in the rest of the downtown and that's not a New Concept but it is part of the background that has gotten us to where we are today it's not a concept that I came up with on my own um but I will you know I will say you know as far back as 2013 the Walnut Street Garage was included in the city's Bethlehem Cris application um as a proposal that contemplated construction uh of part of a larger renovation of the garage that would include a private development component it was just part of the thinking even at that time 2013 that that if we're thinking about how we can do this block better it would include uh mixed uh mixed use development uh and then during the donchez uh Administration more research was done specifically around what uh retail needs were in the downtown in December of 2019 um the Gibbs group conducted a downtown retail market analysis for the Northside historic district um the study suggested the downtown could support an additional 210,000 square feet of uh retail and restaurant uh something that would generate as much as77 million in new sales annually it equates to more than 120% increase of what the existing footprint is of the downtown but it was that that deep analysis of um Market need and market demand that that suggested suggested that um you know we really do have the capacity when you look at our downtown as compared to others you know two blocks is is is not a lot of downtown um and like I said we're doing a great job I think um there's a lot of excellent businesses on Broad Street and we're expanding the the feel and the scope and the the reach of our Historic downtown district but um we really do have opportunity for more but recognizing that of course that the pandemic came in between you know our team in August of 2022 wanted to try and count for that post-pandemic reality in the retail and restaurant space and study the Walnut Street Garage site specifically um so we did an update to that Gibb study uh which concluded that that site in particular could support about 32,000 square feet of new retail space and 18,000 square feet of restaurant space uh to bring Vitality back to that or bring Vitality to that block as an initial as an initial matter really um and you know I know that we are faced with many challenges in um in in retail and attracting and retaining retail and restaurants um in many areas post pandemic but the opportunity We Believe for downtown Bethlehem Main Street off of Main Street remains really strong um and it just becomes critically important that what you know our the development team there is undertaking is compatible with the existing businesses is inclusive inclusive of you know the interest of our existing um business Community um and we're finding really what's the best fit for our downtown how do we improve continue to improve what the feel is uh that is attractive to so many people who want to to want to want to visit the downtown and that's something that we would do in partnership with a development um a development partner and in a lot of ways we don't have that opportunity in other spaces because private property rights are private property rights but in a project like this um we have the opportunity to work with a potential partner to First select a potential partner who we have confidence uh can bring the type of retail can design the type of building can can move forward the type of project that is in the best interest of all of us as a as a community um and we can have more dialogue about what really can happen at that space um and I just I think it's you know such a great opportunity and not just as the Director of community economic development but as somebody who um you know grew up here who in many ways grew up like in this specific Block in particular you know my family had a small business in the Sun and Courtyard um when I was a kid and I remember even then thinking you know how is it that this feels off the beaten path right like just one block away um it feels like like you know it's not quite living up to its full potential and I think in part it was because every time you walk off Main Street up walnut you you see the garage and it's like the energy sort of just is sucked out of the space um in a lot of ways and so the the the idea that you can really bring something more um exciting and vibrant to that block I think it really has the potential to transform the block and add um some opportunities for the Sun and Courtyard as well to really like use that space in the best interest of the community and there's a lot of great things happening there but I just I I really think we've got so much opportunity to do so much more um and and then in addition to the retail space the you know familiar conversation um about what makes a successful walkable vibrant downtown also includes as the mayor talked about opportunities for people to live downtown um it's that mix of of people living people working people visiting that really sustains an urban core and there's not a lot of opportunity for infield development that includes residential around our North Side downtown it's just there's simply not the space for it so this um opportunity is I think a really important one um for us to consider seriously um including that mix of live work and play in this in this project I think we'd be irresponsible if we were not having this conversation um and as well as Miss heler talked about um residential opportunities are needed across the city across income levels um we did study this SP site specifically in terms of um residential opportunities in November 2022 uh the Gibbs group also did a residential market analysis for the site uh just confirming what was really unsurprising that it could support um a mix of Lofts of um Market apartments and the kind of Apartments you know that I would imagine would appeal to like mid-career professionals or um single parents or empty nesters trying to downsize or potentially college graduate graduates like um adding more people adding more more feet on the street and also supporting the downtown you know business Community as well so with all that sort of background uh in mind I I will go over exactly where we have been so far and I did send in advance of the meeting a link to the requests for proposals for the development portion um but I was going to actually just pull it up and walk through it um not in too much detail but um yeah just just a little bit to make sure everybody understands like what we have what we've asked for and what the what the vision would be for this component so that RFP was issued in January of 2023 uh jointly by the city and the parking authority I've publicly referenced a number of times as I said I mentioned it to you um or I sent it to you already um but the goal of this RFP is to find a qualified developer um it is not a bid it is not a selection of a final project it's really about finding a partner um and getting ideas and concepts of what's possible on the site so you know there's Concept Designs in included in the responses but but really what the decision point is that comes next is just who is the partner with whom we will then spend time developing an an actual plan designing a plan as the mayor mentioned if there's not a plan that the the city and the BPA like it won't move forward if there is a plan that we like it will go through all the regular processes harb and to city council the planning Bureau the Planning Commission um but at this point we're just at the point of trying to find a partner with whom we can start that process of building out a design um so I will just pull yes if you don't mind you just click on the little box there it should take you to the why am I why is it not allowing me to do that oh here we go here we go we're two plus hours so if you just want to scroll through the executive summary component just to to again oh back up one page darling um to go over just what what the goal is here and what we're trying to accomplish the city and and parking authority were envisioning development of the current parking deck site as a mixed use development project adjacent to the parking garage um component that th and and Steve just presented on um it would be uh intended um uh it it's intended that the city in the BPA would be seeking a qualified development team with meaningful experience um for successful design approval financing construction operation of a mixed use uh real estate in the urban settings uh it's meant to be a collaborative project and one where really that is meant to enhance the livability and economic development of the downtown um and if you want to continue scrolling Darlene you see the the site which is I I would assume familiar to you at this point of the current garage um and we're just describing what is the general opportunity at the site and then also as well the opportunity in the city of Bethlehem uh what it is that makes Bethlehem special and why this is an excellent place for a velopment partner to invest and and bring in this kind of Vitality through a mix use development project we cite here the retail on the market analysis that I just described um you know which is what uh we wanted the develop potential respondents to you know look at the market analysis we've suggested and say like what can we build from here um to create the the kind of project that you're looking for and I really want to call out on the next page here um that it was always contemplated that uh a project would have to of course adhere to zoning standards and to the harb district I know that been one of the fears that I've heard expressed publicly is how does approval for the garage project impact um this project over here it is a completely separate project that will of course um be NE it'll be necessary to adhere to zoning and this potential project whenever it's ready to come forward uh would have to be reviewed by the by the harb which is a recommending body to you as you know um and you know it would it would also need to be considered and approved by the the BPA and the and the city before moving forward as well so we then talk about the project goals Starling if you want to scroll a little more and I'll just run through them quickly here um you know project goals include enhancing Economic Development with mixed use commercial development maximizing the value of the asset and and enhancing public parking um I've gone too far that's okay I would say the the one of the probably most important pieces to highlight Darlene if you can go to purpose en roles okay seven there you go so as I've said the the purpose of the RFP is um to se uh to seek out a preferred developer and and Designs we're looking for uh a partner that's experienced financially strong technically capable uh that can work with as we say here the BPA in the city and other interested parties which I think would include for example our merchants in the downtown um to propose a project that is financially viable but also meets the goals that we just described earlier in the proposal and also of of course the zoning and the harb and and other projects or and other requirements that are in this proposal as we say here the BPA is intending to subdivide the existing site and BPA will develop own and manage the parking facility on the Walnut Street Garage um portion that is being proposed for parking and then the balance of the site in in a in a structure that has not been determined would be conveyed Pro to a preferred developer for the development of the project that could be a land sale that could be a ground lease those are the types of details that after um a preferred developer is selected you know in the negotiation process that would follow the types of questions that would be asked would be you know how does the ultimate deal look and there's a lot of factors that would go into that so I think darling can you take me back to the PowerPoint so as as I uh then included here on the slide um I you know I wrote to council last week that the responses that we receive do contain a lot of um different types of information confidential trade secret proprietary that's what happens when you submit a response um to an RFP you include a lot of information financial information um and we haven't made a decision yet these materials are predecisional um but without getting into what particular respondents said what we did want to do was was be responsive to some of this discomfort that I've heard of people not having a sense of what is possible there by just providing a general overview uh summary of some of the Salient um characteristics of the of the building that are being proposed as Concepts and as I said they are concept designs only um and not fully engineered they don't even have building Heights on them they just have stories but um the between the four responses that we received as uh um in March of 2023 the proposals range from five to seven stories um using estimates of using current building standards I would estimate that to be at the lowest end Maybe 50t at tall um at the highest end maybe 80 85t tall so like the largest seven story building I can imagine would probably be about 85 feet um and that's compared to the current West existing height of the Walnut Street Garage as as Steve mentioned which is 71 feet tall so um taller than the current uh Western portion of the garage but by about 14 feet is the largest proposal um that that we received um other characteristics of the responses um the proposal for the number of units ranged from 42 to 177 which is quite a a a wide range um some of that variation is attributed of course to the height of the different buildings um other is um based on the types of units proposed some proposals have Studios and Junior one bedrooms While others have primarily one and two bedrooms which might be a little bit larger um but all of that is again and conceptual and it's at the point at which we would select a development team um those are the kind of details that would be worked out in the in the design of a of a building that would ultimately come before you and um harb and the Planning Commission so after those proposals were received what else has been done so far um we've Tor examples of the development projects completed by each developer we've interviewed the respondents and we've engaged in follow discussions um to address some outstanding questions about feasibility as it relates to certain site um characteristics some easements and other aspects um of the proposals and related to the development teams that are going to be important to making a decision um what we have not done to this point uh is entered into an agreement with any of the developers to move forward we've not seen fully designed or engineered plans um so there's no plans available for Harbor City Council or the Planning Commission to review yet um we've not really fully explored what that first floor could potentially look like that would be as I mentioned a larger conversation that we would hope includes other Merchants as well in the downtown to add um perspective to what may be possible there and what's most complimentary to the to the downtown and so then what we can expect from here is uh within the first quarter of this year a selection would ideally be made for a preferred developer and at that point there would be a memorandum of understanding and that would be something that would be setting out the the parameters of effectively like a period of negotiation during which um a developer partner would fully design uh a project it'd be reviewed by the city by the BPA it would be submitted then for all the necessary approvals and there'd be a negotiation process during that time by the middle of the year we would hope that those um fully designed and engineered plans um would be worked on and then in the second half of this year we would hope that the plans would be ready for submission of the harbon city council Planning Commission Etc that's all um an estimate and there are a lot of factors that go into it um but that's that's what we would be hoping for at this point and so I know we've covered a lot tonight and just wrapping up the overall Vision like the you know the project that's before you at the next council meeting that Miss heler talked about is the parking garage and um you know what would happen with that 500 feet is uh the parking authority would use 278 of the of the feet and the remaining portion would be for the development portion it would be subdivided land so it is not one piece of land that has um two buildings necessarily the the parcels would be subdivided into separate Parcels there' be two separate parcels two separate projects two separate timelines um we're not really looking at it as as one project anymore we're looking at it as the right-sized garage on the Eastern portion and you know currently unprogrammed space on the on the western side with the goal of a beneficial mixed use development project there so the overall project phasing again first was Demolition as the mayor talked about we move move that forward with the urgency that it needed for numerous you know practical physical fiscal reasons next you're seeing the new garage that's what's before you now and BPA is moving forward with that with purpose um and we know that that's stressful for residents for employees for businesses downtown but it was necessary um and so we're we're trying to move forward with that component as as uh responsibly as possible to make sure that this displacement period is one that is as brief as it as it possibly could be and then the third phase of the development is of the western portion and you know um there our our goals are a little bit different we're we're of course looking to add vibrancy promote Street on the feet on the street complement the existing charm but we really want to do it right we're being very deliberative about it um so it is not a fast moving process but it is one um that we are our conscious is sensitive and also has has impacts for the next 50 plus years um so we believe that a mixed use development is accomplishing the goals that Miss hel laid out um but we're really mostly committed to selecting uh the right partner who will develop a project that that we think we can be confident coming before the harb and coming before you um and and and presenting that um sometime over the course of the next year um so with that I I think we have finished the presentation portion of thank you appreciate that um awesome that was an unexpected reaction um and I do want to open it up to to council um thank you to Our Community Partners for staying in the room with us I know that most of you have been at the Hard meetings as have many of us and have listened to the har Meetings online um and I know this is probably repeat information but as a council we have not talked about this development project and in order for transparency and good governance it just felt right that we had this conversation together as a community so I'm sorry that this is going to take time but Community engagement just it does take time and we really appreciate you being out here um with that being said uh I will now recognize any of the council members of council for any comments so anybody on council with any comments or questions councilman ccy thank you um thank you I have a um several questions I guess um regarding the the height and the the same footprint at the at last har meeting it seems to be that um the height needs to be higher and the footprint smaller for the garage because so that we can um accommodate the the white box development I mean can you speak to that because is it not true that if we didn't have the residential development retail commercial whatever then we could keep the same footprint of the garage and now not have to go higher and height Council Leon I wasn't sure I know Council talked at the last meeting as far as questions going through the chair whether or not like a series of questions are going to go through the chair and then we have an opportunity to answer them or whether or not you want do you want to answer do you wanna how do you guys feel about doing this night I know that we have talked about our Council rules or I guess I should turn to our solist or you should all question come should they come as a series to me or can we answer them in kind or all series to me um so we'll ask all questions in the series and then we can so I'm sorry so we'll ask our questions ourselves or yeah you can we'll ask them all in the series and then it'll because my understanding Miss Collins requested a meeting to a comprehensive discussion regarding the plan so I guess I don't understand why we can't do that can her question go through the chair and then he answers through the chair one at a time maybe I wasn't clear about that yes we'll do that but we're going to answer the questions together this was a council talked about last time let's go one at a time no that's not what the rules you're meeting okay cool awesome we're not gonna we're not going to do that that's what I if we could do one at a time he buted in not me that this is not what we're gonna We're not gonna do he wants to control the med we going to respect our community we're going to respect our community members that's what we're gon to do here I want to respect them too give a chance to speak tonight before midnight that's why they're here so questions in a series questions in a series like you asked the the questions and the the chair will that was already that was what we talked about at the previous council meeting yeah so if if you want to ask all of your questions at once we can so we can have the development of that conversation okay so I should just ask all my questions now and then we will he'll answer them in kind or the administration will answer them and they'll answer them after I go through them all okay excuse me so excuse me let let councilwoman Cy I want to ask a point of order why can't we ask why can't she ask one at a time through through through I'm asking a solicitor that it's it's allowed and Roberts was of order is my understanding and I was not at this meeting where it was discussed that questions would be asked in a series through the chair so if that was already decided that is how that was a discussion that the administration had that's this is our meeting this is a council no that was a discussion that was had at the previous council meeting with president is it allow through Robert's Rules of Order to ask questions one at a time through the chair well if we set out the meetings at the previous meeting then we have to like keep with the meetings that Council had already put forward did we did we decide this at a previous council meeting because I don't recall that yeah we had it at we discussed it at the the first council meeting where we discussed the Robert's Rules of Order which uh we highlighted three specifics Roberts rules and we reviewed city council rules of conduct at the first meeting and as a point of order that was at your organizational reorganizational meeting so is this me at your reorganizational organization me that was prior to my appointment so I can't speak to that but if that was what was decided that's how we will proceed so can I just clarify so we say that every committee meeting that this is how it's going to proceed at every committee meeting that every question will go to the chair because I don't recall that I'm just asking is that is that how it's going to proceed I think that that's a very good conversation for Council to have when council is here as a whole as opposed to just me making the decision as okay all right so in thean the time I'll just ask my questions I do feel bad that people have waited over two and a half hours almost so um that was my my one question as far as I think that was the in my mind the Crux of the hard meeting that if um if we kept the footprint as is we would need to have the increased um height my other concern is um the timeline with the RFP because it was sent out in December of 2022 due in March of 2023 and it seems like it's been a long time where I I didn't have the information regarding the RFP that was um that was stated tonight um and my question is since March since we received the four rfps has there been discussion with one developer more intensely than other developers one thing I guess I want to I want to highlight is residents of the historic area have to go through significant steps to have steps to have even minor home or business projects approved yet we have such a pro a project just as huge as this and I feel like we really haven't had an adequate or comprehensive plan presented to harb the city council and the community and while I'll say this presentation was very valuable tonight but I have to be honest I think it would have been very advantageous if this presentation had happened previously and especially before the hard meeting I think we could have avoided a lot of um conflict and and concerns and undue stress on people so if I'm understanding your questions correctly your questions were the timeline of the RFP have we had more conversations with with one developers specifically than other developers and when it comes to the height and the the length of the building um can we go into that white box to accommodate for the the what the harb had previously the existing footprint and what kind of ramifications that would have right is that an accurate my question yes thank you thank and then as far as um the the development to white box I guess I have a question will it be affordable housing um and and what will that entail if it is because I know I brought it up at other meetings that I have a real concern with selling public land to a developer because that's what it is if we're going to build units that the majority of the public in the betham cannot afford um my thought is if we're saying that we need fewer parking spots why don't we take the Broad Street parking lot and make that totally residential I think that would be a better plan in my mind we'll have fewer parking spots in that respect and then we'll keep the Walnut Street Garage the same footprint and the same number of spots and if if what everyone is is saying from Administration is correct then we're meeting the goal of fewer parking spots um the one concern I had in the RFP it says some of the proposed amenities State um rooftop and Terrace features and my concern with that is how is that going to affect the quality of life in the Neighbors in the area if we're going to have residential units with rooftop or Terraces that are going to be overlooking their private homes and um patios what will we do with the sale the money from the sale of the land if we sell to developer also will we consider leasing the land um in the affordable City book which many people have mentioned they feel was very advantageous to lease the land versus versus selling um the land for a short-term profit but leasing gives you solid consistent revenues on an ongoing basis um with leasing you can do certain requirements such as affordable housing will equal reduce lease rates um in one county in California they did a 60-year lease on 6,000 units and they're making 27 million annually from that um for the county from that lease agreement so if I caught the rest of the questions it was is there going to be considerations to Affordable housing as we continue the conversations regarding the development in that area is there going to be consideration for develop development in other lots that the the city owns and the concept of leasing versus selling the the land um over rooftop and Terrace features and the rooftops and Terrace features affecting uh the neighborhood neighborhood right and then where will where will the what will the funds be used for from the um sale from the sale of the land um um if you've got all that which which would be great because I I know that that was another question I had had as well about the leasing versus the sale of the land and how how that's going to play out versus you know how I feel about selling city land so if you want to have at that yeah I can certainly answer most of them first of all is like as far as the meeting is concerned councilman kampy Smith we had actually asked for this meeting like previous to this if it was the desire of city council so it was I mean we had asked for this meeting after we had kind of seen where narrative was going as far as Harbor was concerned but we certainly would not have turned down any opportunity to have this conversation earlier Miss Collins myself Mr fernstrom have gone to different places to have a different version of this conversation so just to kind of ask about that is concerned you know that's kind of how it went and just one other com you know comment on the on the box there is that we just you know laid out for a couple hours what obviously all our priorities are our thoughts and things like that like the idea that like the planners the engineers the attorney would somehow like make some decisions that people think or implied have been made and then it was like well this thirdparty firm will just put up a white box at a meeting that everyone's going to attend and no one's gonna ask questions about it like that just isn't it I've been amazed that anybody thought that was something other than a placeholder for these future conversations that we just laid out so like that's that's the God's honest truth is like that's not like we didn't intend to hide anything we're not hiding anything there the I think as far as to try to answer some of your questions together the idea of the footprint and we do think that at some point that Broad Street development up there the Long Street lot as it's called is that's a potentially good Redevelopment site we wouldn't disagree with you there as I had said before like we don't have the demand to support a 770 spot garage we don't have anywhere close to the demand so and I would even say this is that there's probably I mean a mixed use building is not the only that's what we very much believe is the highest best use for that piece of property there are probably other uses that somebody could come up with there that would not be bad uses the worst thing we could do there is put a garage because we wouldn't be able to pay the pay the debt service so whatever other ideas there are in the future about the development this goes along with your thoughts about the amenities and things like that all very legitimate questions nothing has been designed nothing has been talked about there other than what people even brought up as far as the concept was concerned um the sale of land the lease also something that we haven't been determined another great Point like at the end of the day the negotiation might lead to that that's absolutely the type of thing that we are going to consider same thing as far as the housing possibilities are concerned is that I think that there's a lot of different options there as far as what the different um kind of configurations are one of the things that we've seen in different places as well is the idea that you know we talk about affordable housing and then some of the other terms you talk about now might be like attainable housing I look back to when I was a single teacher and I was making $44,000 a year like I wouldn't qualify for affordable housing but like where am I G to live so if that's a rent of and I'm just very very talking very conceptually here like we don't know what those different moving parts are going to be um the there's no ability to talk about a plan that doesn't exist yet like the buildings have literally not been designed we went through this process to be able to find somebody that we thought was the trusted partner to be able to enter into this process going forward um I would also say that your question about the lowering of the height to expand the building that goes back to the 770 idea um harb made it pretty clear in their recommendation that the only thing that they were going to recommend was a was a basically a building that was in the same site which is kind of parallel to a 770 garage um but you know when you go wide as well you need to put foundations to the ground and things like that so however they configure parking spots it's still going to be significantly more expensive and it's going to require our particular um our particular guarantee and then I think I would let Miss Collins answer the only other question I think we haven't answered is about the more conversation with one than the other um so I would let I would let Miss Collins kind of go into how she reached out to all of them yeah so as I mentioned the things that we've done so far and and answering you know what's happened since March we received the proposals in March the initial process was just internal review of what was you know physically on the on the paper and that you know takes some time then in I would say the summer months I believe we went to each of the four respondents to an example project um to get a feel of who they were what their overall development um uh you know approach is right and that and an example of a project that they had done and we did that with all four of the respondents um then we also uh set up interviews with each of the respondents and I will say like the last piece that I mentioned is um we we moved after the interviews and having further conversations about specific aspects of some of the proposals and some of the site features um and at that point we were we we did narrow down the list um from from the four I mean not formally narrow down the list but like those conversations were had um with fewer than all four of the respondents and I will say in addition um because you know the city and the parking authority are working so closely together because we are being very thoughtful about the development portion but also under um I don't want to say pressure but under um you know we're trying to proceed with the the garage portion in a way that's minimizing the disruption for the downtown you know there are a lot of different aspects of the project that are taken our time in this period whether it's you know working uh with the planning department on the the resoning or uh the street vacation and all that that entails with City review and and and and Community Economic Development vment and then obviously the many har meetings um for the garage component you know we're we're trying to keep all the trains moving at the same time but certainly um you know the garage portion um has has taken quite a lot of our time as of late uh the questions regarding the rooftop Terrace feature and how it affects the neighborhoods and will there be anything or what will be done with the revenue from the sale of the land if it is indeed sold I would just say I would say again that the there's no been there's been no amenity space obviously it would be go through that approval process that's obviously the type of thing that people understand is going to affect people in the neighborhoods I think that probably our track record here is that like we are not going to bring that forward without having some type of conversations first and things like that but once again we're talking about an incredible hypothetical because nothing has been designed yet and nothing exists um and then as far as the sale of the lease I mean those are the type of things like as we get into it I think that just just as we talked about parking how Mr fom uses technology how we think about how we can leverage City funds City Grant funds to get other funds we're going to obviously maximize the amount of Revenue that we can get from whatever type of deal it is um and you know that's just that that goes without saying um but that's absolutely you know the type of thing that we we are we are strategizing and thinking about every day is like how we necessarily could maximize those dollars to be able to and I'm obviously just very making this up brainstorming is like if you take moneyy from a sale that you're able to then you know put towards put into your downtown or take money from that sale and put into what some of the things we've talked about as far as streetscape improvements or be able to reduce garage rates or whatever it might be like there's a million options I think none of which we really have thought about other than to get back that your question is an excellent one how we necessarily structure that type of land lease sale is is an absolute uh thing that we will think about and it's a great question can I continue uh yes you have a followup and I I see that he uh exited the room real quick but just as a recap the rules that we did discuss are 4312 2122 in Robert's Rules they were the ones regarding the amount of times that we can speak refraining from attacking a council person's motives addressing all comments through the chairs this isn't addressed that you this is just so that we could recap what we talked about um confining remarks to the merits of pending questions and refraining from speaking adversely on prior actions not pending um just wanted to recap that um as a sociology undergrad I have to say I mean I think you can I love research and I think you can find research that will support your position and go against your position so I see you know the the um the value in both positions as far as a few were parking spots but um I guess one thing I have was when the study was done did that include the parking spots that was roped off and were not accessible I guess Mr fom could answer that um and what I'm concerned about is considering um that we're going to meet the need of parking in the immediate future and the further future for example my concern is that we're going to have a lot of development in that surrounding area and in Bethlehem and Lehigh Valley and beyond for example the boy has 204 units and a restaurant 548 New Street 33 units and a restaurant Hotel betham additional 73 units um the units in the parking garage if if there's residential units they're going to parking 6,000 squ feet of retail restaurants in that ground floor and across the street they're going to need parking um people are continually coming back to the offices postco even though we thought they weren't more and more people are um what about the world heritage site designation if we get that the festivals Music Fest and CH kingom Mar I know we considered that in the census but we are continuing to set records every year with those attendance and all projections for f future growth of Lehigh Valley and betham predicts a market increase in population betham has always been has been designated as one of the top places to live um so I'm just concerned about that I'm thinking you know are we have is there a way that we can look at truly the forecast of of the future and projections and I know one thing that was stated was parking is expensive and it's not financially advantageous but even just in the little research I did parking management marketing is expected to witness an annual growth growth rate of 12.1% between 2023 and 2030 parking can influence which I think is common sense potential customers perceptions of businesses and can literally determine if they're going to shop there or go go downtown or not um parking spaces are less affected by economic downturns than the real estate investment the other um big issue for me and I have to say this because I've been an advocate for people with disabilities for over 40 years and you know we talk about mobility and great walkability and biking and I think that's awesome but we really have to think about the fact that we do have a population of Aging population and people with physical and developmental disabilities and you know we have the Ada and the whole um while I think that we might be meeting the language of the Ada was certainly handicapped parking spots I don't think we're meeting the spirit of the Ada because we're not going to be giving those with disabilities um accessibility and equity in that if we do the residential retail units they're going to be they're going to be placed closer to the most um most selected design designation which is Main Street whereas the parking is going to be farther from Main Street why can't that be flipped because in doing so then we're meeting the two spirit of the Ada so that those with disabilities would be able to park closer and not have to walk as far I mean I know for on a personal level when my brother who was disabled we you know we took him out to eat to meet with cousins from Boston and we needed the wall in the Street Garage we had had to go and get the you know the spot there and get him to the closest restaurant so I think that if we're really going to think about equity and accessibility we really got to think about that and you know unfortunately our public trans transit system is commendable but it's not as Progressive as it can be as other cities and that does not therefore doesn't give folks the option to um not drive their cars and use public transport the other um two other M main points is I'm just concerned about communication and collaboration with the surrounding ing businesses and entities has that really happened as far as um this is the plan this is a demolition how they're going to be affected um we've receiv received some correspondence from attorneys are we looking at any legal issues um one of the the neighbors that AB buts the property is Verizon are there any concerns with that and then um finally I guess I just have to say that you know harb their creation is to give Council to city council and their qualifications must be an architect a real estate broker a building inspector for the city and six others with knowledge and interest in preservation of the historic district I think this entails very well- qualified uh professionals with expertise and historic preservations and I think that really is to be considered I want to make sure that I HIIT all of your points that that I heard questions in there so roped off uh was the consideration given to the roped off parking spaces and the basic General Health of the parking uh system and future growth um as well as theability parching and the Aging population and how the surrounding businesses were engaged um Dr frrom I think most of those are directed at you sure yes thank you very much um I'll answer the uh did we account for the spaces being roped off so back in the 2022 survey um there were no spaces roped off them then uh just over the past couple years we started to see that accelerated deterioration which caused us to rope off those spaces um so when we did start to realize those closed off spaces in 2023 and continue to do our occupancy accounts um you know we realize that and it if anything it still strengthens that position that we have a glutton of unoccupied parking spaces even reducing that number from 100 spots off of the Wall Street Garage so we are you saying that so the most recent survey was 2023 and 24 correct that data I'm sorry so the uh the basis of the uh the site feasibility study um the right si in the garage exercise were studies done in 2022 we didn't have any spaces roped off then but as we started to see accelerated deterioration in the garage it started to become very unsafe um you know that's 2023 we started to rope those those uh spaces off um concurrently uh to the site feasibility study we capture data all the time like the mayor said you know every quarter hour We're analyzing data and it still shows that glutton of unoccupied parking spaces and then even if we take that 100 spaces off from Wallet Street Garage like we're still realizing a huge number of unoccupied parking space so if anything it kind of strengthens um you know our position position where we're just in a we're living in a very um large amount of unoccupied spaces thank you okay thank you thank you um other members of council well I I think M gy Smith had other questions question I mean um I did the disability you yeah sorry you also asked about the disability parking in the Aging population at yes and and the surrounding businesses that were engaged yes and councilwoman kmy Smith had a series of questions um that I wanted to just kind of talk about again to kind of cover there is Mr fernstrom has had um several reach outs to DBA and to the chamber and the surrounding businesses there was a big meeting that we had attended I'm not going to speak for him on that other than I know that he has been willing to meet with anybody that's asked that he has reached out to that was part of the direction there um for him as that far as that's concerned um I think you had asked a question about uh Verizon in in there like we have had conversations with Verizon like we are in a good spot with Verizon horon as we go forward as far as the construction is concerned um I think that you hit on a good point as far as where people Park which is one of the things that we Tri Tred to talk about before is the value of an integrated parking system is the idea that we don't want just parking Supply or parking spaces we want to be able to make sure that the type of space that and where people are parking and obviously people with um disabilities are a part of that but it also expands into this idea of like we want certain people that are downtown for short period of time to park in certain areas we want people that are medium Parkers to park in another area because we're looking for parking turnover and things like that so this kind of idea about how we build a parking integrated system that allows people what they're looking for is what we're after that is what we're trying to do here is to be able to do that in as a cost-efficient way as possible what we had said what to your question before about the boid and the development is like that's why I had gone through all of the different demand slides that there are two different shifts of parking that the ability of the office garage versus the the residential garage it's like there're two different Parkers parking in the same spaces that you're able to sell the same spot twice but we don't even need to do that because we have so much capacity so the ability to add residential in and around your downtown is what our garages have the most space for because essentially in those 1600 spaces from six o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning or whatever there's like a couple hundred people so as that was the point I went through with all of the demand is that there is a lot of acccess capacity hundreds and hundreds of spaces for people if they are living downtown as far as any type of residential there the big thing for us though once again becomes that debt of $35 million that the city would have to guarantee like if we get the demand wrong and some of those things you had asked about like we hope those things come true but the same mistakes that were made in 1970s that mayor Mau talks about and mayor Mar senson talked about and mayor Cunningham talked about was this bet that more parking was going to come and that's a huge bet to make when we are backing that with the city guarantee that if it defaults that then we have to pay that debt service so this is why I spent several minutes talking about why we need to get the demand necessarily right I would also say that if there was this level of demand you would also probably see some movement in the private sector when you go to other cities and you have even Allentown and other places you have private sector and public sector that are in the parking sphere because they understand that they can meet a need there is nobody really that is trying to say to themselves I can buy a build a 400 spot garage and get the financing for it to get demand downtown or in and around downtown so it comes down to the public sector and our public guarantee and as we said before we hope a lot of those things happen we just don't know and even if some of them happen we don't necessarily feel as if we don't have a lot of capacity to add residential and out all those things right now with what that cost is a 45,000 you also mentioned world heritage which was the first time that came up and obviously as the chairman of the world heritage Council and the chairman of the world heritage commission and the leader of the international working group there is not a person in this room that spends more time in world heritage than I do and it goes back to once again how we necessarily want to use our integrated parking system if somebody's coming here there's we don't know if they're coming by are we don't know how they would get here we don't know how many people are getting here but for example Spring Street parking lot the BPA currently leases it from historic betham museums and sites for the next couple of years the idea though that we would be able to put cars down there leasing to hbms like that's where we would want to put them we would want to put them right there to be able to drive right next to where the historic buildings are so there are all considerations for us we just look at it as if like we need to create a more efficient system and and I want say person as people probably remember is like I supported the building of both the PK Street garage and the new Street Garage in the last 10 years and the reason why is because the demand was there there were guaranteed signed permits that were going to pay the majority of The Debt Service it's not like I look at parking garages and say like we don't need any parking garage we just need to make sure that we right size it so we have the funds to be able to pay for everything else we want to pay for if I can just clarify my one question was and and I'll pose this in the spirit of the Ada can it not be considered Ed that the the residential or whatever it is in the white box be flipped and that be if that truly happens that be farther away than the parking garage so that the hundreds of people that are going to need to use a parking garage can be closer to their destination of Main Street and the residential people will be farther away which I think would be more in line especially if we're going to have retail in the parking garage we have retail on Main Street and it's like aam seamless flow of the retail but most importantly it's going to help what those with disabilities to be closer so that's just my my comment my suggestion my request and My Hope thank you thank you uh Council M Gan thank I I got some comments to make before my question so I I number one I totally get knocking down the Wall Street Garage I I've never debated that when I was on council with you Mr Reynolds I uh I had said at that time you know it it it's it was getting to the end of its life and I think I I might be off on the number but I think we voted on maybe $4 million to fix it up you know to keep it going for the next few years I get it I'm not questioning that I'm not even debating it and I also think it's a great thing to put the retail in there which you know it's going to extend uh up past Neville's place it's not going to be like this baren place I get it that's not the discussion and I had asked president cologne and vice president uh Leon if if we didn't have to spend two hours talking about the past in the history of it the decision was already made to knock it down these people are here for two reasons I think the white box and the height and so we spent we're almost three hours into this and uh I applaud all of you for for staying here tonight because I really want to hear from you and I know how things were I've been at Council a long time my brother was mayor a long time I I understand the game and I know when you don't want to discuss things not having a debate back and forth is one of the ways you do it and the second way is to have very long meetings and hoping people start trickling out of here so I I I appreciate I appreciate that you hung out because that first two and a half hours was to try to get you out of here our solicitor has something to say they had I'm making comments the solicitor made a comment go ahead we want to refrain from any personal attacks and I'm not I didn't mention anybody's name correct all right okay so anyways the rfps and if I'm wrong at any point here chime in because I I don't mind having a a a a vigorous debate and if I'm if I mispoke feel free to chime in the rfps went out in January 23 the proposed due date to the BPA was in March 10th of 2023 from what the RFP what I read after March of 2023 March 10th there's going to be a TW Monon period where you guys were going to wait to to analyze the proposals and then take six months to or the first two months is going to be to to pick who you were going to be with or what developer you wanted to be with or what proposal you wanted to be with and then there was going to be an additional six months to debate finalized what was going to go in the white box if I'm wrong on that I apologize but we're 11 months out and all you have shown us is a big white giant box and I don't think and I appreciate Miss K the the the the letter you sent to us with the additional some of the additional information as far as the height you know and all that stuff and the 44 units to 170 units I appreciate that but you've seen the rfps uh I'm assuming Miss carner saw the rfps Mr fernstrom saw the rfps Mr Reynolds has seen the rfps I'm assuming Mr Evans has seen the RPS and probably a lot of other people Council I asked I asked to have Council um be sent the RF pce we haven't heard back yet so I don't know where you know we I had asked that I I sent a letter to you and is there a wait okay is is I I want to make sure that I get all your questions if if you have a series of question so I I had sent a letter to the administration yes asking them to give councel yeah the rfps I haven't heard back yet no I there's a series like are you gonna ask more questions I make sure I so that's question one cool got it written down next one question two is you're asking us to vote on something and there's one quarter of the building is missing you're showing us the north side to South Side the east side but not the west side so let me put this in terms everybody can understand Miss College you you run the Department of Economic Development which is permits zoning and planning if anybody in here showed up to your office with even whether it's an addition to their property or even a cement patio and they did not include the whole design of it and they left one out and said trust me you don't have to worry about that you would have thrown it your your people in your department would have thrown it out because it's an incomplete proposal there's no way you would give any type of of of uh an okay to someone who's only showing you three sides of something that they're submitting you'd want to see the whole thing I think that's all we're asking to do and that's all they're asking they want to see hey what's on the the west side of this building and not it's you just can't tell us it's the white box so so we're 11 months in and we have no decision on it and the uh and I understand the confidentiality agreements that you have with them and the and in the proprietary agreements I get that but Council if you're asking us to vote on this Council should be able to see the rfps if you can't I mean everybody else in your Administration has seen them and they're not even elected officials we're elected officials and you're asking us to vote on something and there's and there's no and there's we haven't seen them yet so the first question is can we see them the second question is if we can't then I think I I know I want to I think I have another vote on here or I don't need another vote I'll do it myself I'll file a a right to no request if that's what I mean if that's what council really has to do to get the information as far as what's in these things they need to know so I I just think there's a you know there's this thought process with me maybe with some other people in here that there's something being hid here because I've never seen a roll out whoever's responsible for this roll out it's backwards you should have had the r of I'm making question no no yeah I do I'm they talked for a long time so I'm gonna have no but we're very concerned about the public as well I being heard just want us all to be as concise as possible cor I'm trying but but I got a lot of notes here so anyways the um the proposals are all in share them with us we're the ones voting on it so share them with us if we if we can't then I gotta you know I guess we got to file a write the no request so anyways the the uh I don't know if anybody else can do math in here but the Walnut Street Garage is 770 spots I'm going to take the average I'm not going to take the max the average according to the BPA was 336 spots a day for the usage the max was 44 414 I'm not going to take the max I I'll go the average so that takes us 770 minus 336 that gets us down to 350 excess spots Mr fman again if if I'm wrong correct me so that so that's 350 minus 180 spots because the new garage is 180 spots less so 350 minus 180 we're down to 178 excess spots in the wner Street Garage then we got um so we're at we're at 178 excess spots then we got anywhere from 44 to 170 residential units that are going in to fit in the footprint of the walner street garage so let's assume it's let's take an average it's not 44 but it's not 170 we're going to take a 100 100 spots so now 178 excess spots now we're down to 78 spots and this is just on the average then we got to include the the the commercial space now the people I've talked to have said you you generally have to have five spots per thousand square feet of commercial Spa retail space I don't know what your numbers are but that's what I've got so let's cut that let's say there's you know there's that's 50 spots for all the retail that's going to go in this new uh garage so we're at like 28 28 spots open in a new garage now that's calculating in the the the deduction in the new garage that's calculating in the uh the residential apartments at 100 if it goes to 78 and and this is the other thing I don't know where the calculation came in and and I don't know the answer to this so if if they could it's just a quick question if the city if someone in the city wants to open up uh a new building the parking required is usually one .75 per that that's residential so it's one point is it 1.25 in the in the central business district are we gonna I don't know one of questions ask I mean that's just a quick one I mean anybody got that the list of questions let's assume everybody has a car okay so I'm just trying to get to your list of so I'm I'm still going on it's a long question longest question so we're already down to 28 spots that's only if we're doing 100 units in the residential component if we go to 176 then we're short we're short 50 so now we go down to the North Street Garage we got an 800 parking spot garage and the average daily use there was 320 the max was 382 a day let's go with the average of 320 that's that gets us down to 4 480 excess spots there's 204 there's 204 units going in the boid so let's assume everybody there's nobody none of them are double there's just one car 204 that's 204 parking spots off the 480 now we're down to 100 uh the if we go with the average we're down to 225 spots and that's not counting any of the businesses that might come back because some of the um commercial spaces in the downtown area are three quarters full or even half full because of covid the after effects of Co and so how do we calculate the businesses that are already the B the buildings that are already this is the question this is uh how do we calculate for the the buildings that already exist that are not at full Capac capacity because we only have 225 spots left for any additional growth in in maxing out the capacity of of those existing buildings that doesn't even include the bner building which is going to be 33 spots or any additional increases so Walnut Street based on this and and and I know from from the hard meeting they said well most of the people from the the boy are going to be going down to the uh North Street Garage well that's 204 spots there's I guarantee you there's going to be at least half of that that's probably going to be additional parking needs for the boy and they're probably going to go over to the try to get in a wner Street Garage because that's the closest one they're not going to try to park down I know they're going to get x amount of permits or whatever down or leases down at the uh North Street Garage but I think the excess ones are probably going to try to go on wner Street so I don't you know when you throw in the calculations of the new Max spots of the new garage we're we don't have much parking space left for additional growth in the downtown area that's not counting for world heritage and it's not counting for any new Demand with the uh Martin Tower Martin Tower is going to be 1080 units they wanted to do 1,700 but that got shot down but we're looking at a th000 units so there's no calculation or this is a question is there any calculation for the Martin Tower site for the 1080 units over there does that round out your question that's a question wrote it down that does r out your question no cool no keep it com how much we haven't had a tax or we haven't had a uh a parking increase in a long time and I know that when we were doing the uh new Street Garage on the Southside I think we bumped it up 25 cents so the six uh Mr fum I think it was a I think Mr R said it was $600,000 a year to the dead service for if we built the 700 spot garage how much money does 25 cents increase and a parking meter rais over a period of a year because I know that's probably coming we've had a lot of other fees increase over this year so I can't imagine that one's not going to be um on the slides when he when the the the professionals were were talking about the uh the walner street garage they showed a slide on the length that it was longer than all these other garages they showed the height but they didn't show the width and all the other examples that they' showed were big were boxes right so I'm assuming ours is longer because the width is more narrow is that correct because there was no slide on the width well that's your list of questions yeah throw throw them all in there yep let's go um why was the roll out of this done prior to the subdivision of the property the property is still one property and I don't know I I mean maybe I'm wrong but if a developer came here and said hey I want to I wan to I want to divide this I don't think we would even entertain uh any votes on it until it was subdivided and I don't think we would have any votes on it as far as the I don't think we can go to the harb or your your department would even even consider even review it until they proposed 100% of the project you guys are proposing three or four sides the fourth side you're going trust me then miss Collins you were saying in the in the Gibbs study in the Gibbs and Market study that the down their study which which you quoted that the city had a capacity for an additional 250,000 more square feet of retail and commercial space where is that calculation in the in the in the parking spaces they're they're going to fly in here like George Jetson or I don't know what I mean what are they doing because there was no there's no calculations in the numbers you guys gave us for that additional 250,000 or the 1080 units at Martin Tower or the B build you understand how like some facts were kind of like left out th those are that's the majority of my questions and and and then I'll let them answer and if I could review some questions because I'm allowed to ask three times correct uh it's two and then the third requires a vote I I thought it was three and then a vote maybe it's three and then a vote Rules book well they yeah I've been through this before I think it's three and then as we all know so the vote I know I'm not getting the vote so the questions that you asked and I want to make sure that I captured them the RFP requires uh there was a two-month with a six-month analysis we're 11 months into this can you clarify where we're at in the RFP if we will be given rfps um there's a parking minimum question as to what is the parking minimum within the like within the downtown area how do we account for buildings that aren't full and if they become full is our parking uh system able to flex for that um I have to ask about I have to ask the solicitor about the Martin Tower site seems very separate from this and outside of the scope of this meeting although should come up in a meeting I'm not sure this is the one parking cost increase to offset the 70 or the 700,000 a month is there an increase considered um was there a width attached to any of the parking decks in that comprehensive kind of diagram of all of them and uh the roll out of the subdivision um is there anything in our planning or Zing zoning ordinances that would have required that split into two or why wasn't it split into two before we got to this thing and and on the tower part of the deal I'm not questioning the parking over at the tower what I'm questioning is where are the where are some of the th80 people that are going to be new there I'm sure they're going to come down to the Main Street area oh no I agree with you that's why I said about can our parking system flux yeah so it was just a why was that why why was that in the we phrase the question why were those numbers left out cool um did you get all of that thank you we will we will try to answer all those questions Council Malon I believe that when city council talked about the rules it was the idea that people speak once and put all of their questions together to allow everybody else the opportunity to speak before people come back and speak a second time so just just just I know you're council president right now but just that I believe that that was the intention of the of the conversation um here so a couple of things here one is the idea that like the reason why we presented for two hours was to be able to go through information that has been left out of a lot of conversations here we presented I even included early on saying that everything we were going to present may be ignored at some point in the future we talked about where demand came from we talked about what the spots were we talked about what the cost was here the the whole reason why we felt the need to be able to present was because the conversations that were coming up to this point was not including all of the comprehensive information and I would respectfully disagree with the idea that you can have a conversation about 770 parking spots and not talk about all the conversation from the past or these conversations going forward to the future we again asked for this opportunity we wanted people I wish everybody would stay here you've probably heard me say this before the thing that I like the least is when people have an opportunity to speak and then we have an opportunity to respond and they're not here to hear the response so we would like this we know this is being recorded we hope people review all of the information we presented so in the future they have an opportunity to be able to answer as many of these questions as they possibly can about where we're coming from what the Genesis is of our um ideas where our kind of priorities are and things like that I would also say that if it is the desire of any member of city council to suggest that we back the the parking authority debt on $35 million which when you amortise including the interest leads to $21 million more like I would just create that resolution and bring that up for a vote because that is something that we are not going to support and if it's the desire just like it's democracy to say we want a 770 parking garage and we believe that it is like you have the capability to be able to send that statement of of of interest to us that that's something you're com that you're comfortable doing because a lot of this comes down to this idea about whether or not there's demand to be able to out and support that debt or not didn't we do that excuse me I believe that we I'm I believe I believe Council I believe that we have we have the ability here to to to answer the questions not filler Buster go ahead he it's been two and a half hours and another hour with us doing it it's going to be another hour before we get to the to the public so can we just like at least move this up can you finish answering the question so we could get to the public comments I will I will have Miss Collins answer the first question about what she responded to as far as the request for information about rfps yeah so um to Mr Callahan's question there was a a request that came in I sent two emails in response to that which I assume Mr Callahan received because he referenced them so that is the response um to that request at this point um what I what I said in there you know still stands like there is confidential proprietary information we're not intending to turn out uh publicly the responses all all four of the responses um to the RFP it's not our normal practice um and it's uh we don't think appropriate in this case I did want to include that summary information um we you know can certainly consider or continue to discuss you know when would be an appropriate time to to talk about what the final selected um proposal is but we are not there yet um on the decision timeline I'll repeat what I had uh said in response to um Miss kmy Smith's question uh we did put those out in January we received responses in March we may have written in the RFP that we were going to um review for two months um it has been longer than that certainly we have not entered into the point where we have a a memor of of understanding to kick off the negotiation period that just has not happened yet um we've been very deliberative about this process which is why we spent the time going out to visit each of um the respondents it's why we then had full interviews it's why we have continued to ask follow-up questions um and among the many uh things that we are working on throughout the Department of Community Economic Development and as well as the many aspects of this project in particular that have um been urgent at various times uh we just have not gotten to the point yet where we've made um a final decision and started that process of entering into anou and just to add to that is we obviously have a lot going on and Miss Collins whatever we put in there as far as deadlines are concerned we didn't do the opposite where we decided something and like didn't share anything like those things literally haven't been decided yet because we've been working on a lot of different things and Miss Collins in particular within her Department have been working on our housing study has working on we got the $10 million for Broad Street she's been working on the community center she's been t working on the homelessness there is there's a situation where if we want to get to these things like this is not the only thing that we put on RFP or say like we want to be a Mike Mr alcol does this all the time where he says this is what's going to be the third quarter projects or the fourth quarter projects and whatever happens or comes up it doesn't necessarily it just takes more time to be able to do and on this one in particular with the sensitivity about it and it's not something that like I said today it wouldn't even be something that we would we like we are able to make a decision on because of how sensitive it is on our side to be able to like we obviously live here we work here we're not trying to underbuild parking we're not trying to do something that we know is going to have to come before all of these boards anyway like it literally hasn't been decided yet which is why we wanted to have the conversation so we could lay out exactly what we've done what has not been done and what is going to be done to try to correct some misinformation about what people think has been done and take a couple of the other questions um in terms of reviewing the actual proposal to harb it is a full submission the guidelines make pretty clear that like the our uh internal code um department will review that like before it gets sent to harb it is considered a full submission um you know I could give other examples if you uh replace you know windows in your home and then a year from now you're planning on replacing your roof you don't have to do those at the same time if you have one parcel and you want to build a house and then you want to build a garage you don't have to do those at the same same time you can build on a portion of a piece of property and put a submission forward um for that uh and have it be considered a a complete submission appropriate for harb review um so uh there's nothing that's being treated differently about this project as it relates to what is a full submission or not a full submission it's just a separate development that is not going at the same time um the answering a few just specific questions that maybe Mr Fern can elaborate on we did include uh we did provide I think he mentioned during his presentation we provided um to the parking authority information about the development projects uh in the North Side downtown to include in his parking demand study that was the Boyd theater um apartment it was uh 548 North New Street um it was even the hotel bethem expansion that has been approved um um with the Cris project all of that is also referenced in the RFP itself and I I did go through RFP sort of quickly because we were running out of time but um all of those proposals have been a consideration uh throughout the process both in the development portion and then also um in the parking portion as well and those numbers are not calculated as mayor Reynolds talked about at length just on a you know a one forone basis because it's not how the parking system works but those numbers were in fact included in there um as was potential demand from world heritage um increase as well and to and to add to that too is I mean I think I've we've now tried to explain twice about like how we look at parking when you talk about like the residential the boid when I had put up that slide about when people necessarily come into North Street Garage and when those like 300 people are there and when they're not there and why they necessarily would allow for the residential um why that would allow for the residential demand so as far as we talking about the two shifts of when office workers and residential people are coming like that's a big part of where our determin came from about where there is parking capacity and when there is not obviously we are aware of these things we've talked about them we want people to have a place to park we have adjusted our parking minimums which I think you were kind of alluding to before that we have reduced it from 1.75 to 1.5 because we saw developers where where our old zoning code like required 1.75 parking spots and they would have to purchase them or build them and they got unused because people were using cars less so like we're putting all of these different thoughts into like these obvious and things like that but the big one and I that's why we wanted to and I know that you thought that we talked for a long time to us there's also an advantage of public comment had gone first because then we would be able to correct things people said that weren't true it's like six in one hand half a dozen in the other if we speak first we hope that some of the things we say that puts up there about where our motivations are where we come from work into people's comments if they don't I understand it as I alluded to in my comments but like if we wanted if they if people wanted to go first to speak like that's not necessarily worse for us that's not that's not worse for us because it gives us an opportunity to respond to that this is we look at this whole process as we want to share as much information as possible and I know you might laugh at this but we had we we had the four different people talk for the two hours to be able to get into the Nuance of what the decision-making process was is we could have G gone on for another two hours in a very legitimate way where we talk about the data and things like that we didn't do that but as far as like what is it that we want to talk about what are our priorities and things like that we are never we we're we never don't want to talk about those things um and then I would just say one more thing and I think that might answer all the questions that I can answer is like the street facing building when you talked about like what the length of that was that was more a point on what good development standards are as far as like the old Jane Jacob's ideas that you don't want blocks that are too long of similar uses and that there was a time when you had 500 foot parking garages and people didn't necessarily think about that as a negative as far as vibrancy it was n necessarily about width or height or things like that the point to be made is that if you're able to create a smaller like footprint on the street that it adds to vibrancy and it adds to those kind of good development principles which is what the kind of point of that that that that question was so uh to recap the questions that I didn't hear answered Mr fernstrom are you planning a parking increase to offset the 700,000 is that something that's like within like this year and the second one was if you don't know off hand please don't go looking for it just send us is there a width to the garages that would differentiate that graph that had us so far up depth the depth so the the I guess the main question is are you planning a parking increase a a parking meter increase sure I'd first like to you know just um mention to just mention that the mayor's uh assessment of shared parking is the mayor's assessment of shared parking is perfect we don't uh count the success of the parking uh system has a number of permits counted so it is shared parking he alluded to that with different shifts of parking um and what was the other two uh if it doesn't look like you had it on the paper so if you could just get Council the the depth of those other structures that were used to um show that our Walnut Street Garage was like 500 feet or whatever the fu it was um right take two yeah take Council rule five is two and then I think it's three but it's tonight I'll go by two I I can read the rule for you no member shall be allowed to speak more than twice on any question without permission of the presiding officer I'm not get permission I really want to get to public comment so do I I wish we would have did that first any resp communities so go off King uh council is expected is a question council is expected to vote on this without having the rfps having seen the rfps if that's true then council's only option is to file a right to no request so that's that's two questions Mr Mr Reynolds uh had sent had had mentioned that everything is fine with Verizon we we got a email did did Mr Reynolds get the email from the Verizon lawyers about their deep concerns about the electricity Options under that would cut off their business and severely harm their business underneath the wall in the street garage and the fiber optics are what I I don't have the memo in front of me but we we had a a memo from a lawyer of Verizon and if Mr Reynolds could just address that because it didn't sound like Verizon was too happy with the situation as it is and that was I think within the last week if I'm not mistaken um my third concern is the the tallest part of the proposed new garage is 30 feet taller than the existing garage and I know it's where the elevator shafts are and the stairwells I get that and I know that the mid part of it is a little lower but my my fear is that and this is why I was questioning why the white box was presented in the pictures and if it was by mistake I apologize but it looks like the white box is at the existing or the height the proposed height of the new garage stairwell so it's almost like we're trying to establish a new height on the garage so we can now oh well when the when the apartment complex comes down the residential complex side of it comes down well the the the stairwell is already this High we just might as well extend it all the way over so is the plan uh for the residential component to be as high as the proposed height of the stairwells and the elevators and I think that's the concern really with a lot of the residents that are here especially people that are on Market Street because if I had a home on Market Street and they're multi you know they're million dollar homes if I had a home there and I had an 80 foot wall 30 feet higher than an existing is I think I'd have a problem with that okay so to recap the questions um want to talk again about the Verizon lawyers uh does the right to no request change any legality surrounding the RFP um the tallest part marked by the stairwell is that's going to be used as a basis for the development component those were the three I'll let Mr fom first handle the Verizon because that was a demo issue as far as as far as that is concerned Mr fr thank you mayor um so with respect to Verizon you know just this the the sheer magnitude of the project um Verizon being a very large company we were engaged with Verizon since July of 2023 and I think some Channels with them just got a little um a little some miscommunication happened between their team um when all along we've been communicating with them for several months coordination and collaboration efforts um and how we can work collectively and collaboratively for the Demolition and concurrently with the new construction of a garage um just my last email from Verizon um I can read that off to you and it was a request for them to include uh their representatives in bi-weekly and weekly construction demolition meetings uh which we satisfied so they are part of our construction demolition team and things are going well and I would add to that is that I conversations as well they reached out they had uh there did seem to be some communication errors but they are engaged and they're involved and you know demolition is continued because every everybody is uh everybody's on the same page they're going forward um as far as the RFP is like and I understand we've said this multiple times but like there has not been a building that has been designed like there has not been a building that's been designed it has not been designed has not been designed has not been designed so as far as what staircases lead to it Miss Collins had shared before what the conceptual responses had come back which was between five and seven stories between 50 feet and 85 feet which is based on what an average kind of one floor story is which is how those numbers came together there is nothing more than conceptual numbers that have come back from the conceptual rfps to share so as far as where the garage height came from it came from right sizing the garage you can't build a garage like 5505 560 570 580 like there are different levels there so based on what they thought the demand was submission one was 590 ft submission two I'm sorry 590 spaces submission two was 527 spaces as far as what this building is as Miss colins had said as well is like we're trying to find something that has consistent and synergies with what is next door but nothing exists yet so saying that like the elevator is this high so then I and I whatever we said that the Western elevator is 71 feet now or whatever like we this is like we talked about our housing meeting the other day it's like you want neighborhood appropriate development so you want something that's consistent with what is there now if it's 10 or 12 feet higher than that like on the garage side like that is a determination about whether or not when you guys have a chance to vote if you think that is consistent or not but as far as this development piece is concerned the development piece the development piece the development piece nothing has been designed yet nobody has picked yet it's basically like it was like it we asked people what their different ideas were and they came back and we shared those ideas with you we shared what the units were we shared what the square footage was we scare we shared the four developers with you like and they probably wouldn't even want us to do doing that and that's not even something that we had to share but we shared all of this information even though it's at the conceptual stage because we know it is something that people want want information on that's as much information as exists now what exists beyond that are things like what people want to charge for rent or how much they're going to pay for the fit outs in retail information that is not it's not it doesn't need to be shared it's very bad pressing to share that type of that that type of thing that encourages people one of the things that we've heard a lot including from people in this room is we want more and more people to want to do development Bethlehem we want more and more people to want to be a part of this process sharing all of those that information with a lot of people is a way not to be able to do that I can rest rest assured if there is anou that's signed that we're comfortable going forward with at that point the process is a very different one than it is now but even thatou is just kind of a like getting to the starting line is this is the person that we're necessarily talking about about what the design is going forward I think at this point after we've heard about the white box 55 times like if there was more information to share and you're going to find out that there's more information to share we would tell you what it is and there's not because we haven't gotten there yet because we've been doing other things and that's as honest an answer as we excuse me Council milon this is I have we really have to get to the end of this interaction Kaitlyn Collins over here it is an opportunity here to be able to speak and respond and this is why we tried to lay out all of that information and when Miss Collins and I sat down to put together a presentation we really wanted to focus on this is what's been done this is what has not been done and this is what is going to be done to be as clear as humanly possible about what the process is going forward the garage and the development piece are on two very very different timelines thank you Council MC do you have any questions before I move to that side of the dice I have no questions thank you I do and I'm going to keep my comment uh that goes with them to like this big so that we can just get the questions listed um really my only comment is thank you to everybody who came out tonight um I hope that while comment could have been at either end um that the information that you've seen and the discussion that you're hearing now is helpful to you in moving forward um I also want to thank the people who sent letters um and the Committees and like uh the EAC for example who sent information and thoughts to council already uh via email um my questions so um if a smaller garage is the the right choice cool um could the lowest level and has it been explored for the lowest level of the garage to be underground so that it would be the amount of spaces that you're saying are actually right sized but um you know not extending above I don't know in our area with we know we've got sink holes and all that if that's possible but thought I'd put it out uh to see if it's been thought of um for the retail space would the BPA be the active landlord or would that be outsourced to a management company and if you would be the active landlord for whatever retailers go into the space in the garage um I'm not talking about the development portion with that question um would where else do you have that experience as an organization serving in that capacity um I'm also wondering there was the comment about the current uh the new garage would be considered enclosed and therefore require um certain types of ventilation and sprinkler system uh I wasn't sure if the current gar is considered enclosed and if not what are the increased maintenance costs uh for ventilation and sprinklers um then last two questions um okay so uh will vacating because one of the other things we're considering at our next meeting is vacating that portion of the street does that take away any parking spaces from wut Street on the street um and last one is um am I correct that at the February 6 meeting our vote will not have anything directly related to the now famed white box um besides the fact that if we vote affirmatively on either of the two plans that white box will not be a garage is there anything beyond that that we are voting on for that portion right nutshell smaller garage could it be underground retail spaces have you been on landed before director frrom enclosed garage increased maintenance cost vacating is it taking any spaces from the Walnut Street garage and the Tuesday vote is only in regards to the harb it does not uh go to the development component at all got it thank you um sure as councilman uh Kellan alluded to there is a uh with the rising comments there's a duck bank that runs through the whole entire underground uh from the rizzen building all the way down to Main Street and there's an easement actually in place from the 70s uh in perpetuity that um the parking authority has to honor that easement not not to disrupt uh disrupt those Communications um you know like like we've talked about we're having close collaboration and working relationships with them to do what we can do to uh to satisfy uh the legal requirements from the easement uh but that also um eats into the opportunity to go Subterranean now I can I can articulate that that is one major uh major component of not being able to go Subterranean is the Cost U that would have to happen if we were to relocate that we got preliminary costs off within our you know months and months of conversations with Verizon that would be about a million dollars to move that uh Verizon duck Bank kind of reducing the feasibility to go subt trining for the X amount of spaces that we would have gained but I can turn it over uh to Kevin uh krian the engineer in the room to talk about maybe some more components of why going Subterranean uh might not work out and um and he could also talk about the ventilation and sprinkler question I I agree with uh with Steve's comments about going below grade the Verizon duck bank is in the way and it's B mainly a cost issue um in addition take any garage that is that goes below grade is significantly more expensive than a above grade garage um and then they're associated maintenance cost with that um getting to the question regarding the existing garage if it's enclosed um there are portions of the existing garage they are enclosed and do have mechanical ventilation um increased maintenance cost associated with mechanical ventilation and sprinklers um I don't have those figures off the off the top of my head U but there is a slight increased uh yearly inspection cost um and ongoing maintenance cost uh a spring system and mechanical ventilation they could last for 20 to 30 years um so there's there's going to be ongoing maintenance each year just just like you would have to maintain your car change your oil and so forth and then you're you're eventually going to have to replace certain things so those systems would have to be replaced at at 20 to 30 Years thank you that two two answers there as far as the street vacation the street vacation doesn't take any spots there but it also is about right sizing the streets Miss heler had talked about this before is like it's a wide street it's not walkable and part of the problem that we've had on Walnut Street forever going back to my example about the bike that I had 40 years ago was the idea that like it's just not been a street that people want to walk on or hang out on so the idea of right sizing the street through the street vacation I think it's like six or eight feet or whatever allows for a sidewalk there to be able to narrow doesn't take anything away as far as parking the other side there is no parking there on that on that western side and then as far as the retail is concerned there's been nothing that's been worked into the Parking Authorities pro forma on the garage as far as paying off as far as any type of you know rent there so what that means is that doesn't mean that means that the parking authority doesn't have to agree to a bad use because they need the money which we wanted to be very intentional about we want that area to be one that's filled with vibrancy that's a good energy use and we wanted to have synergies with the rest of things downtown so the ability there to be able to work that space and into one or multiple type of retail spaces there that has the type of good use that we want is something that has been worked in there intentionally so but the big thing is because we've seen this in other places where people decide that I want to get the quick dollar to be able to have the type of use on Main Street or other places that people don't really want there we don't have that problem because we have control of what goes on here and we're going to be able to have a lot of control on what goes on in the development piece as well so like question about what kind of retail could be there I know people are like oh it could be like a vape shop and things like that like no we don't need the money we're not those people that try to like just get the quick dollar and not care about what that necessarily means and that's obviously been a problem on Broad Street on Main Street and other places so like it has been intentionally designed this way to allow for the best possible uses that are going to be good for good for the downtown and that's part of the public process we want going forward as well is to talk about what those synergies could be as far as what this type of what this part of downtown needs good councilwoman uh the only other question was just clarification about what we're voting on Tuesday vot yes which I believe might be a a question for for you right or would that be a question for one of the solic I could certainly answer it go for it um as to what you were voting on on Tuesday night you are voting on the um coas for the garage project which is just the garage project um the way you phrased your question I believe you wanted to know whether it would not have anything whether your vote would have anything to do with the white box besides the fact that the Porche would not be a garage and I would say that is correct you will also be voting on other issues the street vacation of course and and the zoning um but those are those are ancel arean in so far as far as the coas they are the coas for the Walnut Street Garage project and the only thing it has to do with the other area and the second development project that is not yet in process um is that that portion will not be a garage yes thank you all right uh councilwoman willham do you have any questions before FL move to public comment yes very very quickly um uh I first want to sort of clarify um the unprogrammed space we're referring to as the white the white box it is an unprogrammed space um I also have an interest in Ada adherence and um walkability for uh disabled and aging people but I I just wanted to comment that um individuals who are disabled and aging will yes park in the garage but they will also should that unprogrammed space become residents they will also live there so I'm I'm not sure about flipping the two projects um but I also want to honor there are a lot of people here who've been following along for a long time there are also people here who are here for the first time who are here to learn and watching from home as well so thank you to uh my colleague Miss leair for clarifying that we are voting only on the garage not on the unprogrammed space although I do appreciate the interest in it and the the time devoted to that tonight um but knowing that that there are some folks here to learn for the first time just a couple things I want to clarify my questions are can you clarify the area I think it was uh 2,000 spots were referred to earlier as sort of the entirety of our parking assets downtown I was wondering if you could clarify uh those those assets what that area is um also with regard to sustainability I know you know this project is being looked at from as you said many diverse interests one of them being sustainability and a sustainable Community as part of of the project and the the vision was referred to earlier I know that in 2021 the BPA passed a resolution to adopt policy of U adhering to sustainable design in all future projects just wondering if you can just quickly tell us about how uh that resolution has been put into practice in projects since that time and how those sustainable practices will be applied to this project um lastly very nuts and bolts again for those who are here to learn perhaps for the first time obviously public awareness and engagement is extremely important even if it takes four or five hours we appreciate the information um those who are here listening for the first time may have missed notifications about previous meetings one of my questions was how have you engaged the public and you answered that question in your presentation but very very nuts and bolts for those who have missed notifications or meetings what is the best way for them to stay apprised how are you communicating future meetings with the public and can you be specific with those who are listening who would like to continue to follow along uh and those are all of my questions I think most of those are for you again director fernstrom can you talk about the 200,000 or the 2,000 spots that um are our parking structure over here on this the north side how do people stay involved and up to date on the most recent meetings and informations regarding this and uh can you seriously very briefly talk about the sustainability portion of this the best part sorry sorry no no no worries um so the study area comprised of um as as Jim stated in his opening of a certain area within the downtown within that certain area we have 258 on street parking spots and 1,828 parking spaces in the offre street facilities so that made up a total of 286 parking spaces um how are we communicating the project uh we have a dedicated website that has everything um W Street Garage related we actually just put it up to our toolbar on the top of the web page for for a little bit more of ease um there is a popup announcement that comes up when you go on the web page it directs people specifically to that page um I am pretty visible on Main Street there's a lot of uh business owners that are in the crowd right here they have my cell phone number um just Saturday I was sitting in an establishment talking to the owner of one about the project so uh very approachable very accommodating um people know how to get a hold of me really well we also show up bi-weekly DBA meetings and and talk about the project there we have monthly BPA public board meetings where a lot of decisions on this project have been made like I said in my opening statements to even 2020 right about 26 26 times SP on the agenda voted on talked about in 36 meetings um and that's Wednesday fourth Wednesday of the month at 4M at the betham parking authority offices so I would encourage anyone to go there and and uh and and um just listen or just sit down ask questions or engage in public comment there also our website is a very uh a very good resource too our minutes are post on the board there's board audio minutes and also our social media page has become uh uh quite um engaging over the past year so those are all the things that we do to kind of try and communicate the project and I'll keep the sustainable design standards brief even though it was a a very nice accomplishment of ours so in 2021 uh the board passed a sustainable design standards resolution committing to uh future structures being built using sustainable design standards uh following a park smart certification uh Parks smart is a spin-off of lead that's directed uh is very garage Centric due to some lead standards garages cannot be lead so lead actually created one with Green Building Council um so we follow those standards and the PK Street Garage is actually our first garage that we are going to be going to the parks smart process the garage is built it's open it's functioning really well uh but right now we're going through the exercise of um of trying to get that accreditation so thank you thank you all right uh I wanted to be able to give uh council president cologne a moment to talk but I'm I really want to move on to yep Cole say what you got to say dude sorry I I just briefly want to thank uh councilwoman Leon for presiding over the meeting tonight and to everyone who's there we're dealing with some some sickness here in my household I wasn't able to participate I without being able to see who's all there in person I appreciate everybody coming out tonight I I'll have um more more comments when Council has uh legislative items on the agenda next Tuesday and I remind everyone that there will be agenda items up for vote at Tuesday's meeting and I look forward to being able to be there in person and participating thank you thank you um all right I will now recognize the public for comments is there anyone who would like to make public comment with a five minute time limit out of respect for everyone in the room and we do have quite a lengthy list of people to sign up that I will go through first um I will ask that we continue to stick to our five minute time limit because we truly want to hear from every single one of you tonight so going with the list first aler ler dhda bhda he left did he leave unfortunate um the second person is uh Dan Nito oh was that you did I mispronounce the name Al loer had to leave due to illness oh so he asked me to speak I'm just reading his statement yeah yeah sorry I was do I have to identify myself yes uh uh identify yourself and give your address Mary Fel 323 Center so again this is I'm I will I'm reading his words the Bethlehem historic district Association was founded on June 20th 1989 the membership consists of residents property owners and tenants and businesses residing within the historic district the mission statement of BH da States in part the mission of the Bethlehem historic district Association is to protect the historic character of our neighborhood the bhda supports the decision of harb to deny issuing a certificate of appropriateness for both the B bpa's proposed Walnut Street Garage replacement projects as inappropriate the bhda strongly supports harb's mission to preserve the architectural Integrity of the historic district by carefully evaluating new construction and ensure that it is sensitive to neighboring buildings and the general historic and Architectural nature of the historic district accordingly the bhda requests that the city council adopt harb's recommendation at the forthcoming February 6th council meeting thank you thank you the second person I have signed up to speak is Dan Nito I promised my wife I'd be home by 9: Li so I'm going to shorten this from five cards to one uh so Dan Nito 20 West Market Street and my office is at 14 West Market Street and as was mentioned earlier my property is considered ground zero for the parking garage we've been talking a lot tonight about for right size the garage about a 100 times tonight I don't consider extending the wall from 30 feet to 70 feet right sizing this that doesn't make any sense to me when you look at these uh charts we've been talking about this for weeks now months excuse me the the concept of increasing the height of that parking garage to accommodate I guess it's submission one no one's talking about the impact that's going to have on the historic Skyline Markus Street and Beyond I know there was pictures shown earlier of of the of the view of the parking garage through through my house which looks like it was taken from somebody laying in the gutter across the street if you step in front of the house and walk into God's acre you will see the the the parking the the wall of the parking garage and at 70 feet and I understand we talk averages of 50 feet but it's not an average of 50 feet it's 70 feet at the highest point which you can see from God's acre uh which is UNESCO proposed UNESCO site and I understand about what we're talking about with the with the right sizing the parking garage is taller the answer is there any Middle Ground I mean harb voted no on on submission one and submission two is there a middle ground submission one to me I'm I'm hoping that Council sees that right off the bat as a as a non-starter that's an unconscionable height for that parking garage look at the charts that they showed you of the old wall versus the new wall submission two isn't much better it's 60 feet instead of 70 feet but I somewhere between zero and the 35 million that the mayor is quoting and by the way I I I really appreciate everybody coming out and doing that tonight I mean I really sort of cleared a lot where we a year too late but it cleared up a lot of cleared up a lot of misunderstandings but if you widen the garage not the whole footprint what if you kept the parking what if you kept the spaces at the 525 spaces and accommodated the height restriction by just moving it out I don't know the I don't know the uh engineering of that but is that a possibility or is it just simply we're not going to do it we're we're not going to listen to harb we're going to do it the way we want to do it why have harb why even have them they tell you not to do it and you say well okay thanks we're going to do it you sound like one of my kids the point the point I'm trying to make is you've got to respect the people you put in the position to give you advice and I would suggest that you if you can't listen to what they're saying try to find a middle ground that extends this thing but keeps the height where it is Maybe slightly higher and extends it out to accommodate the space restriction thanks thank you Mr Nito uh the next person I have to sign have signed up is Brian carahan I believe Brian carahan nope um he just W back oh he was grabbing his stuff no worries I should sign up H can't say no good evening president cologne vice president Leon and honorable council members I am Frank felici a standing in for Brian K carahan who resides at 444 North New Street and is currently out of town his words follow please consider the following comments as you determine whether or not to override the historic Architectural Review board's decision not to recommend a certificate of appropriateness for the Walnut Street Garage project ahead of the December 6th har meeting I wanted to submit comments to the board I looked on the agenda and did not see how I could do that I contact Ed the historic officer Joseph Phillips and he suggest that I send my comments to bethlehem's planning director Darlene heler I did just that and my comments did get to harb I later learned that harb meeting agendas always contain instructions on how to submit comments in advance but these directions were left off the publicly posted meeting agenda where BPA was presenting plans for the Walnut Street Garage at the December six har meeting Laura Collins mentioned that an RFP for the project was publicly posted online after the meeting I did a Google Search and found an RFP for the West End of the garage properly dated uh property dated January 13 2023 I presumed it was sent to developers I looked for the RFP on the BPA and City websites and could not find it the RFP was posted online but there were no links to it and you could only find if you knew it existed and thought to use Google is that considered publicly posted I felt harb in the residence of the historic district needed to know in detail the plans for the West portion of the property so on December 13 2023 I submitted a right to no request to the BPA requesting copies of the developer responses to the RFP on December 20th Steve fernstrom sent me a response saying I would get an answer answer to my request on January 19th 2024 I did not get a response from Mr fernstrom on January 19th and I sent two reminder emails on January 19 and January 23 on Friday January 26 at 2:30 PM I did get a response from Mr fernstrom saying at the meeting Monday night the city will nonetheless present a summary of salient nonproprietary confidential trade secret information and concept submitted by those seeking to be selected to work with BPA City on the development of whatever project is eventually designed for mixed use development at the site end quote city council will now have the opportunity to consider the details of this development when they make their decision on whether or not to override harb an opportunity harb and the residents and businesses of the historic district did not get transpar Arcy is a Hallmark of a functioning democracy this effort to get the entire Walnut Street Garage project through the approval process by design has not been transparent I was struck by a comment Mr fernstrom made at the December 6th harb meeting when he asked the members of harb to ignore quote the chaos of the public meeting end quote when evaluating whether or not to recommend the COA the public meeting and the content thereof is another home Hallmark of a functioning democracy harb's mission is to preserve the architectural Integrity of bethlehem's historic district the board made the right decision when it recommended a COA not be granted for the Walnut Street Garage project as presented in meetings on December 6th and January 3rd respectfully members of city council should you vote to override harb and award a certificate of appropriateness for the Walnut Street Garage as proposed you will be voting on the side of urban planning consultants and developers and not on the side of an important part of your constituency the residents and businesses of bethlehem's historic district thank you for your time thank you the next person I have signed up is Frank the seato which is that the letter for us thank you before councilwoman Liam before I uh start my comments I just have a question to th you don't need that okay I'm I'm really sorry when it comes to public comment you can address everything to me and we can have discussions afterward but in the sake of keeping with Council rules um public comment is for comment okay um well I I'll use that my five minutes because it's a very quick question so the question that I have is since the current garage is going to be demolished and um understandably the communications conduit for uh the communications infrastructure from Verizon is going underneath isn't this the right time to remove that and put it in the street where most City infrastructure structure resides so that if there is a problem in the future you don't have to go into the garage to do any digging or whatever it would make more sense to me yes it's a million dollars but this is going to be there for 50 years so that's that's my question and if you guys are able to answer that I'm sorry I I will I will askra not to but I will find the answer and you can I understand okay my comments greetings again president cologne and councilwoman uh Leon and honorable City Council Members my name is Frank felis residing at 323 Center Street and I'm here to present a summary of two petitions that I organized one for residents and one for historic district businesses both were designed to collect signatures of those not in agreement with the proposed plans for the replacement Walnut Street Garage that were shared during previous harb and city council Council meetings the petition for residents has 75 signatures and that for historic district businesses has 36 signatures I and others collected signatures of residents first with a focus on preserving the architectural Integrity of the district as you well know we use this petition to appeal to harb and fortunately a COA was not granted following that effort I became concerned about how the businesses would react so the focus for the second petition for the for the historic district businesses targeted convenient and sufficient parking I was very surprised to learn that both residents and business owners are of like mind but for different yet analogous reasons this was reassuring in that I didn't want to create tension between residents and businesses the takeaway here is that convenient and ample parking is required to support the economic viability of the local business to maintain the respect to maintain the respect our historic district deserves the structure should be appropriately Limited in height in height therefore a replacing kind garage is what is needed to satisfy both residents and businesses alike I have copies of both petitions for your individual review and request that you take this into serious consideration and thank you for your attention one comment that's not included here is I understand the work that they're doing to right size what I don't understand is I I've spoken with nearly 36 businesses and everybody says parking is a problem now what do you believe or how do you deal with the discrepancy between the right sizing effort and what the businesses are saying that's that's the problem here thank you for your attention thank you the next person I have signed up is Randy and I believe this is Randy and Jim R sorry I have one scratched out here uh Shelly Nito you're good to go okay so you know what that name says if you live at 825 Center Street you're the person I'm trying to um have speak with me right now so if you live at 825 Center Street and would like to speak with me please come to the podium thank you um Craig Adamson good evening you have some difficult decisions to make it sounds like I'm a firsttimer here um my name is Dr Craig Adamson uh I am the President of buckmon Academy which owns 531 Main Street 544 Main Street and we combine 546 into 544 Main Street so we're right at the end of Walnut Street um and so we're across the street as you come down Walnut right on the corner of Walnut and Maine um and we're a nonprofit Consortium of organizations and we we have a lot of functions in the community um one is you might see the signs The International Institute for restorative practices so our graduate school um we also function as is a small private Academic School it's buxmont Academy and counseling programs for kids so we have several staff and several events that come into the center of Bethlehem uh and we need a plan uh that can grow with us and parking is important uh waln night Street Walnut Street garage has been our go-to parking uh garage for years um we started the the school in the 90s and then expanded and bought 531 uh in the late '90s early 2000s so um we're right now actually we've made a commitment and our main offices are all at 5:31 now we move from Doylestown and combin them all here in the center of Bethlehem because of some of the convenience the Main Street uh and made some some decisions to col consolidate uh here in Bethlehem um what I'm really concerned about um and what I heard today is is all the data is being pulled from 22 and 23 and as a business owner that's probably the lowest time that we've been parking in the garage if you look back uh I I get the idea uh my backgrounds in research as far as it being reliable and valid um I'd ask to go back to 2018 data we're really going to look at at Trend data we would hold full uh summer institutes where we have three training rooms at 544 Main Street we have uh 50 people minimum in each of those training rooms that we're providing services for regionally I bring in all of our staff for multiple staff meetings it's about 125 staff members four or five times a year we've been going to zoom and we're just coming back um we hold conferences in the center of of Bethlehem uh International conferences uh every other year I'm planning 25 and 26 now I don't know if I want to bring it to Bethlehem that parking is going to be such a problem we bring in a lot of regional people um so my concern with the vote is that I want you to be dad in informed and I want it to be reliable and valid my concern is you're not using the right years to make a good decision so you know I I'm all for that uh and I like the idea of updating Walnut Street I've parked in it for years um it it needs updating um but I'm concerned about the lack of parking uh right now um I have 27 monthly spots uh that we rent for staff I have I'm doing the renovation so I prob I'm in our biggest growth mode in 20 years I have a lot of Staff coming back in April and March I went to Spring Street I was promised North I'm trying to shuttle people from Spring Street up to our business at Walnut Maine if I want to have an imperson training I'm thinking about canceling it where I'm going to bring in just one training for 50 people I don't I don't know if I send them to North Street I can't send the Spring Street so we have an evening program I can't have people walking from Spring uh Spring Street at 9 9:30 at night all the way up um to our building so it's it's caused a lot of and I get it it's temporary to be at Spring Street but I don't know with this consolidation and The Narrative of we have so many spots there there's not enough spots right now if I'm G to have any kind of event we're not going to have the parking if we go down in spots so so I have a lot of concerns uh walking in uh to this meeting today I don't want it to be done quickly I want it to be done done right and I want you to think about the growth and us bringing staff back uh Co was tough Co hit us so hard and we're just coming back especially in The Graduate School space so the 27 spots that we have right now is mostly for the private school um but I'm expand I'm almost doubling our office space because of the need because of how many people we're hiring and right now Recruitment and Retention is really hard if I tell folks they have to park down the hill quarter a mile away that's not a good option uh for us right now so thank you for your time thank you Dr Adamson the next person I have signed up is George R thank you it's George harb not George harb coincidentally H RAB versus H RB I see those signs they make me very happy I'm at 77 West Broad Street uh I'm in the unique uh uh if not unique at least relevant position of having been a resident at 77 West Broad right above Ripper's Pub there one block from the Walnut Street Garage for 30 years I've used the lot every day essentially since I first got my entry pass uh back in August of 1993 uh while it may seem unbelievable uh in all those 360 months I've always found a spot to park I realize that goes against what some may believe is true but through music fests Christmases holidays and even predicted snowstorms I knew my car would have a space in the Walnut Street Garage and it always did always I have found my interactions with the BPA to be very positive whenever again over the last 30 years I've approached them with Civility and respect they have responded in kind the recent transition of providing me a new space at a different location when Walnut Street closed could not have been smoother or more copacetic I really appreciated the care and ease with which the entire process was handled so thank you I've also always appreciated the parking authority in general and have never quite understood anyone who had such animosity towards them it always seemed strange to me uh let me just say that as a multi- deade resident who has literally had a view of the garage in my windows all this time I even featured the roof of the Walnut Street Garage in a music video that I did about 15 years ago was very popular on YouTube I am nothing but excited at the prospects of these of this plan one plan two and I sincerely hope that all the studies and evaluations that have been done um which seem to have been tremendously expansive can be fully taken advantage of so we can really have something new modern efficient and wonderful at the Walnut Street location I'm genuinely very excited and I hope that Council uh can vote to approve this plan and point us saw in a fantastic new direction thank you thank you Mr Rob not harb um the next person I have signed up is I believe Kelly ronals I'm gonna pass on my I think doing a great job you are a saint thank you um the next person I have is Neville Gardner uh good evening um so I chair the Downtown bethlhem Association um and I own Donal square and McCarthy's Pub uh and I agree with a lot of what George said um I've experienced uh parking authority working very hard to do the research and the numbers are there I'm a civil engineer um and I guess I trust that all the research that the consultants and everyone else has done are correct but I really wanted to address not so much uh the appearance or how many places the garage has because I'm going to TR that the research is correct um would be the white box um I believe that Bethlehem does need more retail um I know some people don't don't really think that as far as where the retail is located and where the parking garage is located if uh that area that's the white box turns into retail um obviously the retail will be extended from Main Street right up to where the parking garage is intended to be built the new one um so that's seems appropriate to me um I know some of you say that you think it should be the other way around I don't believe that's the case uh I do I do honestly think that Bethlehem is short of retail and if we're going to exist into the future hopefully this whole process of built in this garage will not take more than 20 months because we get tied up in a mesh of disagreements um I I know this was my best year in business ever in my retail business um so I'm sure that there probably will be more people in the future I'm sure we're going to increase I'd like to think that city of Bethlehem if we need more parking would' look at another option uh you know the Long Street Lot up in Broad Street was mentioned um and you know it's a big ticket to pay that 21 million extra dollars uh bethle parking authority have helped us promote Bethlehem and a lot of our funding that DBA has has come from parking meter fees which I think is totally appropri uh the same thing for the south side so I just like to say I'm in favor of the additional retail and I hope that the part with that makes everybody else happy can be worked out so that the historic district residents don't have their um their houses ruined and the view ruined and they're property devalued I think that's very important I'm not sure how you solve that but good luck thank you Mr Gardner uh the next person I have signed up is uh Jim FWE good evening Jim fer 2222 Main Street virtually all aspects of these two course of actions would include many of the goals presented in the proposals today vibrancy commercial improved facades all that's going to happen no matter what garage is built so the question is is it the whole site or do we look at and ignore the magic white box for the budget in3 the city had over $360 million in debt we we hear recently how great we're doing we're paying down the debt we're going to break under 100 million I think we can afford an extra 8 million if we decide to build a garage over the entire existing site the additional 8 million to 700,000 I think we could afford that on January 6 the har voted down the BPA proposals both of them they presented increased height reduced parking and smaller ground footprint they presented no alternative to utilize the current footprint in order to keep the rebuilt height the same as the existing facility prior to the har voting when asked if they would resubmit another proposal to address the Harp's concerns the BPA responded with a definitive no the current bpa's argument is the manttra of right sizing while no previous garage was ever right sized so why no true Alternatives why back to the unknown white block sorry to bring that up again this whole project evolves around the white block that no one really talks about we talk about it but we don't so many apartments but then know it can include parking it can include commercial the question is can the garage be right sized on the current footprint is not can the garage be right sized but why is it not I earlier proposed just one alternative with a relocated police station to utilize the entire property without increasing the height of the garage which would have met the harb's requirements so a real alternative is not that difficult to conceive from the beginning the BPA is certainly locked into only one course of action as directed by the administration in order to sell off property for the sake of a downtown apartment now to the coas city council has no legal alternative and must vote down any resolation for the two courses of actions as disapproved by the harb on January 6th as emphasized in all previous discussions the harb is the expert on historical preservations and standards and they must follow state law and guid guidelines as discussed several times and reinforced by councilwoman Leon the council has no legal Choice put the vote in concurrence with hard recommendations during the October 3rd city council meeting when discussing and voting on the grage demolition resolution since the har voted to approve the demolution the argu argument was that the city had no legal alternative but to approve the demolition COA when Council discussed and voted on demolition under resolution 10l the city and city council presented legal arguments led by solicitor penella and confirmed wholeheartedly by city solicitor spurk that in enence dictated no Alternatives other than the recommendations and the scrudge demolition due to the harb approval vote under state law and guidelines and that supersedes any other council members opinion we were led to believe that they must approve the harb recommendation and that any other vote would violate law and subject the city to legal action in this meeting solicitor penella read article 1713 emphasizing that city council must only consider the factors that the harb considered since the harb disapproved the current two BPA courses of action coming in front of you in one week you must use only the same factors that the harb used and therefore also disapprove those courses of action and utilizing Mr clone's own arguments and those of the solicitors the city council has no legal choice but to disapprove both of the bpa's courses of action as disapproved by the harb themselves and return the proposal to the BPA for revision and resubmission you painted yourselves in your own legal corner thank you thank you Mr fer um the next person I have signed up is uh Barbara diamond Barbara Diamond 425 Center Street I'll be brief um I also want to encourage the council to reject the COA harb is your board of advisors they are experts in these matters they have the authority and expertise to make a proper determination they spent considerable time deliberating and I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision to oppose the city's plans so I commend harb for taking a a difficult decision as a resident of the historic district I have to abide by harb's decisions although I might not agree with their decision about what I want to do with my house I recognize that their mandate is broader than my interest or desires about my property and serves the interest of the city to preserve its heritage without their protection bethlehem's historic district wouldn't be the beautiful place that it is and no doubt we wouldn't be considered by UNESCO as a world heritage site you only have to go to doy toown for example to see what happens when there's insufficient attention to protecting a city's historic Heritage so I urge you to honor their decision I also uh would like to say that the process of moving this project to approval has justifiably raised people's concerns the city is not operating with an o in an open and transparent way this has consequences for confidence in our local government not accepting the decision of its own Advisory Board and asking the council to override its decision only supports people's concerns that the city is not serving the public interest thank you thank you Barbara [Applause] the next person I have signed up is Joanne Haynes everything that you were gonna say okay awesome all right that exhaust the the list that I have so we're gonna go around the room while you find peeps in the room anybody on the the left start well sorry he beat you to the hand rais so if you want to go first thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Chris pedon I am a lawyer for 48 years in the city of Bethlehem as well as a resident I represent uh the Hotel Bethlehem and I'm here tonight to take a different TCT for Council I had prepared remarks but I have decided that they were irrelevant as a result of the presentation first off uh I think a member of the hardboard is here and we are appreciative of their time their thoroughness and their listening to the residents one of the things that was told to me and I sat on that side of the table for some 20 years was now deceased chairman and mayor Doug raso told me you know Chris he said it's not important what we do on that side of the table what's important is what you hear from the podium and I think tonight bears that out first of all I would ask that your solicitor give you an opinion on whether you can vote on this certificate of appropriateness as I understand that it was denied 4 to one and I was president at the meeting and the only person that voted for it was a city employee I raised the Spector of a conflict of interest but that was passed over but I would ask that you look at the expertise review the records of the hardboard and their thoughtful process at rendering a decision for you I I would disagree with what I heard just now the hard board is advisory to city council you could vote to approve or you could vote to disapprove however my position is I don't think you're allowed to vote and the reason I don't think you're allowed to vote is I would rely on my letter that I sent to the p uh president cologne and let me read part of that letter to you the role of the historical and Architectural Review Board is to RW and provide a recommendation to city council regarding any erection alteration demolition relocation adaptive use or new construction project emphasis supplied within the bounds of the central Bethlehem historic district that is visible from a public Street or a public right of way again emphasis applied now we hear tonight for the first time about this I call it the white elephant some people refer to it as the white box do you know what is going to go there do you know if it is going to be consistent with zoning do you know if it's going to be consistent with harb do you know if it's going to be consistent with other regulations of the city such as setbacks such as usage such as water and sewer you have no information in that regard other than they say well the process is somewhat slow we put out the request for proposals which was on the we s it by the way however there's nothing else there now they have receipts but the word is that we can't let those out because there's proprietary information there they are indeed public documents and any proprietary do information that's there can be redacted and they should be provided at a minimum to council and at a minimum to the public and I'm directing my comments now to the solicitor because I think this is is for her decision review of the COA is Guided by the principles contained in the Secretary of interior standards and more specifically in the standards of Rehabilitation I would ask the and I come to this particular game and contest with a little more knowledge than most people because I wrote the Southside historic district as well as the mount Ary District on the west side the principles require the following and I'm quoting that the en encouragement of sensitive Rehabilitation on involving the least amount of intervention or change to Identity retain and preserve the overall form materials and details that are important in defining the architectural and historical character of the building and the following conjunctive sentence and the entire site despite what council has told you this site is is not subdivided and there are no uses so the harb was correct and say how this city council can vote on a project that they don't know what they're voting on in the military they tell you not to shoot in the dark I would hope you do the same thank you thank you sir anyone else uh left Mr Rob up top Dana grub 2420 Henderson Place had a lot of prepared remarks but based on the presentation which was a very comprehensive presentation uh but a presentation that probably should have happened over a year ago and a presentation in a series of public forums that should have looked for public input before we got to this point we keep hearing that uh uh the priorities are the city's priorities I think that's a little backwards how about the community's priorities the uh uh The Architects and Engineers once again brought up the height of other buildings in the downtown area that's completely irrelevant some of those buildings aren't even in the historic district and those that are have been grandfathered in into the historic district because they were built before the creation that's an irrelevant justification the sight lines I see they Ed the same photograph they used at the har meeting I do photography professionally those angles were not helpful at all and the scale of a little ant on a sidewalk across from uh the homes on Market Street uh doesn't really really show what the impact of the garage would be what you want to do are two other angles one is at the back the rear of each of the homes along West Market Street then you'll see what the impact is the other is from God's acre so you get a broader perspective of what that garage will be you can do a lot with photography and make things look what they aren't the other thing and it was raised I think by two members of council uh is the um the location of the garage on the site uh it just seems uh counterintuitive to move the garage farther away from Main Street instead of closer to Main Street and but when you have a developer potentially lined up maybe that's what's driving that particular situation but if it were closer people who have issues with Mobility would be a lot closer to the Main Street area question came to mind during the presentation um why do we need retail space in the garage that could be for additional parking in the facility um it's always interesting and I've sat through a lot of public hearings in my time with the city how they tend to drag out so that the crowds tends to disperse it's a timeworn strategy by City administrations um I've never felt that turning the corner and walking up uh Walnut Street from Main Street was anything other than a walk up to the garage if I had parked in the garage um I'm not quite sure how other people view that but uh one of the city officials seemed to have a problem with it um in the mayor's comments he talked about the potential for developing the white box but also said something might not happen well then the question is if something doesn't happen with these proposals what's the next step and we're talking about guaranteeing the debt um this is the first time I've heard about uh the the city guaranteeing the debt on this garage and my question would be why um the city didn't guarantee the debt on the South New Street Garage that was a big issue and it was then councilman David djino who raised that issue uh there's still a lot of questions um I'd like to finish up with actually something I had prepared because I think this is really relevant uh to what's going on here bethlehem's number one asset is its history it's started with the moravians and it worked its way right through Bethlehem Steel and the many many ethnic groups that came to this city different generations of civic-minded residents and organizations recognized that over a half a century ago and have built on that brand ever since the garage is in the National register historic district and like it or not it comes under the local ordinances which are designed to protect and en the physical side of that history thank you thank you Mr Rob I just got to say y'all are going like right to the right under five minutes and I really appreciate that so so much not because I don't want to hear because but it would really hurt me to say please wrap up um so uh to the yeah he was the closest one I heard that hi I'm Lucy Lennon I live at 1021 Beverly Avenue and I re recognize a lot of you there's a lot of merchants here there's a lot a little bit about highest and best use and I know a little bit about the parking garage Beyond 2018 I don't know how many of you remember Technicolor when it was here they closed in [Music] 2011 I believe it was and there's an article you can look it up in the morning call that Frank Shipman then owner he was quoted as saying that had to leave because of all the structural electrical and water problems in the Walnut Street Garage why this is just coming up now okay we got to tear this down and this just happened this has been going on a long time so now we have no garage you have to tear it down you've known this for years I get that but all of these people myself included because I'm the one who's renting those high-end apartments everyone's screaming about and I'm the one who's putting merchants in some of my clients are here I have nowhere for them to park because you pull down a garage without figuring out what you're going to do so seeing the city does have a couple of bucks in its pocket and the parking authority does why can't we do a trolley for these guys until the new garage is put up so that you can do we don't want to lose 50 people coming into to town for a project I don't want to lose a tenant because no single lady is going to walk down underneath the bridge at 10 o'clock at night with her you know laundry and groceries why can't in the past the betham parking authority in conjunction with the DBA they paid for a trolley during Music Fest during Christmas time Joanne has a beautiful store in the hotel Bay I shop there myself I'm not walking that far up the hill sorry Joanne with six snow globes for Christmas because it's too far a walk my husband who was the director of parking is 78 years old now he can't you were talking about handicap accessibility totally agree with you flip it over so that the hectors of the world can go to the Apollo The Edge kid from clusters was here earlier the Fufu shop where you know I buy my granddaughter 73 stupid Ducks no offense but I can't take any more Ducks wonderful Ducks but if you had three and a half million to buy some Churches you got some money to buy some trolleys yeah you knew I had to get that in there no I I looked at the price of trolleys they're like 65 Grand it we are a tourist City you're getting the designation we have a you want to expand the downtown how about we put some troles out there and make it a little bit easier because you all can't agree on the color you can't agree on this white box you can't agree on how many times you ask a question do you really think this is gonna be done in 20 months no no this is like the gestation of like an elephant or something like three years or it's going to be forever and in the meantime every one of these people is going to be affected and it would be a Goodwill gesture on the part of the parking authority too to support the merchants with the trolley so that's just my suggestion thank you all hope this all works out thank you miss lenon the Ducks at the Fufu shop are amazing by the way um anybody else on the left would anybody else like to make comment oh well I I yeah I'm we're going to go this way so I can keep track so if if you had I have to go this way it's G to mess me up spatially so just this is this is the process um for those that don't know me my name is Joey Gavin I live at 1228 maffin Mike I'm sorry Joe McGavin I live at 1228 Moffet Avenue in Bethlehem and I have been selling real estate in the Lehigh Valley since 1976 in May of 2021 I interviewed with uh mayor donchez to be on the harb and and uh I was selected to be on the harb and one of the things that came up when I met with the mayor and his staff was discussing the fact that one of the things and why I came to betham because I moved here in 1985 but one of the reasons was that the historic district although I don't live in the historic district the historic district is one of the reasons why the city of Bethlehem has surpassed Easton and allent town in terms of its marketability when you look at showing someone the Lehigh Valley that's relocating I would always take them and give them an extensive tour of the city of betham even if it was not somewhere that they could afford to move so the thing I look at the only I mean I was voted for and argued that yes we have to tear down the garage because I'd been in the building yes it had to come down and we didn't have a project but I really felt we we couldn't wait to get the project torn down we would develop something well what it means to the value of all those people on Market Street and other and other people within the historic district and the City of betham when the city council goes and vetos what the harb is trying to tell you from the work that we did in the time that was spent on this it doesn't bode well and another um another point when you're looking at what we talked about at the harb I asked and tried to get another proposal from them and discussed what you can do to still have the right size that you want but not have the lot or the white box be as large since they haven't subdivided the the land for the white box they could extend it somewhat the argument was then they need Expansion Joints they have going to have maintenance issues all these other things that they need to look at but the point of it is is that we cannot look at having this building built as high why you don't have why you only have uh White on the west side is because they know that there's going to be a building going right up against it one of the reasons I think why you can't go and put the garage on the west part and the apartments on the East part is because they're talking about possibly having it be seven stories when you go and take seven stories that's going to even be higher than what the garage is I think although I'm not an architect but I could ask my daughter um and then um another thing when Mr donz or I'm sorry Mr Reynolds talked about when they did the Redevelopment they displaced 40 people and what effect that had upon those 40 people and you know now you're doing something which is going to have an effect upon people who have substantial investments in properties in the historic district that's something that you need to take into account because and I don't know what Lucy thinks but I think that when you go and put this huge building in there it's going to have an effect upon value one two when you put the apartments in there the South part of the apartments is going to have Windows if you go and put these windows in there now you have you're opening up people to be looking in and taking away from from the Privacy that people have within their space at the at the harb meeting they talked about the 60 the buildings that are 60 feet and the question that I asked them is if you have all these buildings that are 60 feet how many of them have a historic residential property be in their backyard and I'm out of time thank you sir anybody else to the left wish to speak before I move to the center all right uh I'm going to turn to the center seems like so I I saw Connie's hand first did she disappear so how about it my name is Connie posac I live at 209 East Market Street own a business on Broad Street and belong to the historical and Architectural Review Board which you kind of all know that now most I know most most of the people sitting behind me here they deserve respect for all the hard work they have put into research and giving up time to be here those who live in the shadow of the garage have a right to express thoughts on what they see is right and call out what they feel may be horribly wrong for Bethlehem there is pride of ownership they are at home with history or they wouldn't be here at all they have become Fighters for what may be very wrong for the next 50 to 100 years some live in the shadow of a current deck that have accepted it but are now fighting the possibility of a towering shadow that may be V visible from Mars I can't imagine what is L for the BPA to try to make a lot of people with a lot of different ideas happy add to that building restrictions historic homes and heritage site and it's surely a different headache every day I recently read the Pennsylvania's historic district law was passed in 1961 and in the following year the city of Bethlehem created the historic district Guided by the US Department of Interiors under the National Park Service Artic article 17713 in my opinion pertains to the garage I quote article 17713 was enacted for the purpose of protecting the architectural and cultural history of historic Bethlehem the general design Arrangement texture material and color of the building or structure and the relation of such factors to similar features of the buildings or structure structures in the district 11a States the effect of the proposed change upon the general historic district and Architectural na nature of the district and 11b the appropriateness of exterior architectural feat features which can be seen from a public way or Street I can't imagine they were thinking of the big white box or a theater screen on a brick wall that wall begs for an historic style backdrop it also States harb may suggest plans plan changes to conform when requested the result was presented as a smaller garage done with a few clicks of a mouse this garage project was denied based on size mass proportion and scale we held no discussion on orientation architectural elements projections and materials although they were presented to us as pure perfection Council does not have all the information from harb as this project was not and is not ready for approval for certificate of appropriateness please consider the hours of research the community and the community kitchen table meetings as they prove this project is important to the downtown town and the neighborhood it should be considered with the future in mind we are getting rid of an ugly building we have the chance to respect the past and build a building that will step forward we are not there yet the best impression we can offer our visitors to Bethlehem is what happens before they walk the streets and that is easy to find and welcome parking the input and concerns from this community should be taken taken back to the drawing board and reimagined thank you thank you does anybody else in the center want to make com Mr sh Bill sh uh 1890 Eaton Avenue I have uh two quick points before my prepared statement the first is I would like to seriously propose an additional Council rule any presentation by the city Administration shall be limited to one hour anything important can be said in one hour uh we heard a lot of words words and words two I'm going to take with me the impressive equili equilibrium I've heard of equilibria in my time but not an impressive one I'm going to use that sometime in fact I think it's going to be number two on my alltime list uh you might ask what's at the top of the list something I heard in DC was which had some applicability tonight a willful blindness to the obvious prepared statement future historians of Bethlehem May well cite the W Street Garage as a symbolic turning point and whether Bethlehem will retain its traditional character istics of closely knit neighborhoods overall human scale and relatively calm streets or morph into a significantly largest city with a significant significantly I'm pretty emotional tonight higher percentage of people living in apartments taller buildings and with more activity and congestion uh little interjection here footnote where is it written that the people who are not living here now are going to dictate the future of Bethlehem it's for the people living here now that should decide it I'm only going to read be able to read part of this because uh if anyone's interested it was published in the Bethlehem press on January 10th analysis of the proposals emanating from the city of Bethlehem Administration CB and its poodle the Bethlehem parking authority BPA indicate the values held by the combination of CBB paa first the new garage will have lower fewer parking spaces because the existing garage is full only during Music Fest and the Christmas season thus the new garage will not be able to satisfy Peak demand why it will create more space on the ground second the new garage will be taller creating still more space on the ground even though a taller garage with the same number of spaces is less efficient since the higher percentage of floor space has to be devoted to ramps third part of this sidewalk will be incorporated why well we create more space fourth the CBB paa is asking that a portion of Wen Street be vacated why well it would create still more space on the ground ground what is the proposed use of this additional space the CBA cbbp has recently been more forthcoming on this and I'll skip that paragraph clearly they intend to have an apartment building um putting this statement aside why is this emphasis on an apartment building in that space what is going on here why won't they tell you what it's going to be like they want you to approve before you know one one further thought about the idea of a apartment building up on the Broad Street parking lot the zoning of that parking lot is limited commercial with the maximum height of five stories thank you thank you Mr sh uh does anybody else in the center yes I am Mara Fritz and I live at 818 West Market Street in Bethlehem many speakers have presented their concerns with the concept this Walnut Street Garage was based on most of them reject the decisions leading to this propos proposal and I agree with some of them and and not with others I do agree that the parking Street structure that's there needs to be demolished and would be too expensive to maintain I agree with that um but mostly I want to talk this evening about the design of the proposed garage that has been rejected by harb and now is before you to make a decision I am fortunate to have earned a professional architecture degree in mrch for one of the best architectural schools in the country UVA I established a fern and designed many buildings many of which were in a context that's historic not unlike Bethlehem in addition I'm the immediately past president of harb there are two crucially important con Concepts that my education and experience have taught me about good design first to be architecturally successful a building must be authentic that is a building should look like what it is designed to be a church a church an art museum and Art Museum and so forth second a building should be good-look in its own right and it should enhance its surroundings in this case a world famous historic area the environment of the new building should be more beautiful after it is constructed rather than before this project fails on both accounts I showed my husman a picture of the design and he said oh I guess that's the apartment house where's the apartment parking garage instead of being authentic instead of doing the hard work of conceptualizing conceptualizing a be beautiful parking garage this design just kind of made a facade that vaguely represents 19 Central Comm commercial buildings with cars sitting on their roof I recognize that this is an unsuccessful trick to try to make the structure fit into a historic context it utterly fails and it could be it it has nothing to do with Bethlehem it could have been built anywhere it will not make its environment more beautiful or better functioning and you've heard that from its neighbors the design standards for rehabilitation developed by the Secretary of interior have successfully gu guided Construction in historic districts across the country and are the basis of harb's work you know that this kind of design that we have been seeing is specifically the kind the standards says not to do uh in fact four of the 10 standards refer to new construction two of these are particularly relevant number three each Pro property shall be recognized as a physical record of its time place and use changes that create a false sense of historical development such as adding conjectural features or architectural features from other buildings shall not be undertaken yet that's exactly what we've been looking at and number nine new works shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with the massing size scale and Architectural features to protect the historic incity of the property and its environment emphasis on environment this building certainly doesn't do that in this building city of elegant buildings which can have an amazing future please don't let let this Miss begotten project be your legacy follow the guidance of our well-informed and professional har and turn it down thank you thank you um Mr Alex Stephen andex 77 Ridge a reminder the official city of bethle diagram of the organization shows two rectangles side by side one rectangle is said Administration the second rectangle says City ccil and they're joined by a parallel line indicating they are separate and equal in a center of that horizontal line is a vertical line connecting to all boards and authorities where it's located says it's it is independent of both City Administration and Council but it does imply that it's responsible to both in terms of communication now the fact that the city and the parking Authority together have sent an RFP out to developers does that violate the organizational chart if it does not then since Administration and Council are equal all that information should have been shared with counil by definition think about that my real comment is to city council to encourage them to pay closer attention to the public comments of concerned citizens and I entitled this a voice that must be heard of a number who have spoken this evening I can say that none do I consider as close personal friends but rather over the years have gotten to know a goodly number of them by their quite regular attendance of various bethan public meetings in this multitudinous number of meetings I've observed the existence of a common denominator in many of the individuals which can be best described as a love of the city of Bethlehem and a deep concern for its welfare and quite importantly the absence of any political bias or Personal Agenda a form of camaraderie between these concern Citi was unconsciously formed and most of the exchanges within this group were through email or face Toof face with the primary subject discussed being the needs of the community over the past months past few months this camaraderie has been in attendance at meetings over the subject of the wal Street Garage their comments reflected a profound knowledge of the problem and in addition the the degree of research expended into the issue one can quite easily conclude that this group is The Unofficial expert in the matter some of the speakers this evening has cast a shadow over the dealings between the city Administration and the parking authority this is supported by the fact that in the citizens comment there's no indication of any political aspects or development developers interest while the same cannot be said for the administration to whom should city council view as the best source when deliberating in the future on this matter it would be extremely prudent for Cil to not view citizens comments as those of private individuals but collectively as an educated caderie of concern whose so mission is the welfare of the community that choice then becomes quite clear thank you Mr an Alex um yeah hey Terry kyber 34 five Grand View Boulevard I don't live in the historic area but I'm here a lot um I talked about this at the harb meeting um I'm two miles away close enough to come here whenever I want because it's it's just neat to be down here I commend all of you for coming out because we're fighting the Handover apartment complex and if I could get as many neighbors out as you guys here that'd be awesome so you guys keep it up keep doing a good job so I went downtown during Chris Kindle mark twice and had a park on the roof so I questioned the available spaces where are they if I had a park on the roof I never had a park on the roof before twice and if it's not to make money then why was I charged $5 do for event parking when I asked the guy what events he said Chris kindl Mark I said that's on the other side of the river I'm not going to walk over there and then he said Main Street shopping since when do you charge $5 to park in the parking deck to go shopping on Main Street there's no charge by the way over on the over on the souths side at Chris Kindle Mark there's no charge to park in those parking lots but you charge me $5 do over here to park in the parking deck I normally at the most pay about $2 for I volunteer with the um or I work with the betham carriage company so when the carriage company's in town I like to go down there and see the horses so I'll come down almost every night and I don't mind paying a dollar or so in the parking deck but $5 to walk down Main Street to see my friendly horses uh just another question I have that I don't know if it matters matters to me uh currently the parking deck has two entrances two exits the new plan only has one suppose somebody rear ends somebody there on the way out forget that oh they have to stop at the thing they rearand them now you're sitting there lining up to get out because there's no other exit just something to think about thank you thank you Siri anybody else from the the center yes sir Michael biano 424 Center Street um thank you for the presentation from this side over here it was very good there was a lot of information but I think uh councilman Callahan really had his finger on the pulse of what the people here were looking for um during that first 2 and a half hours is I believe I only heard the word historic district once and so I'd like to put an exclamation point on how unique and special the historic district is Walnut Street is Walnut Street Parking Garage is in the historic district um we're being considered as a world heritage site there are 1,199 world heritage sites you probably know this don't answer the next question they're 25 in the United States can anybody name any one of those sites I can name all yeah no I know I know you can you don't count so who are we in comparison with the Statue of Liberty monachello Independence Hall in Philadelphia peblo in Tal these are so unique and they are our brothers and sisters and that's who we should be comparing ourselves to So when you say the national average is something doesn't matter doesn't relate to us we are unique we are special and I'd like us to continue that when you're considering this presentation that they presented I'm asking you to look at it carefully it is very one-sided I did some drawings I did some research on it it it is geared toward showing you that oh it's not that bad of an impact um I would request that you get more information um a white mod I I suggested this two months ago at at a har meeting a white model an actual three-dimensional model that will show you what actual sight lines are sight lines that they presented are very one-sided they do not show everything they only show what they want you to see again back to the white box yeah nobody knows what it is and you're being asked to vote on the parking deck and if you approve that you're tedly approving the size and shape of that other thing and the functionality of it so I'm asking you to reject it because you don't have the information and the information that you have been given is very one cited and is not complete thank you thank you sir does anybody else from the center want to make public comment I don't I missed okay my name is Randy MTZ I work at 18 I mean I live at 1825 Center Street it's an apartment complex but and I'm going to be really nervous I did live on Market Street uh by long funeral home for 13 years and I was part of all of this I know everybody a lot of people here um but I'm also the president of the Sun in and I've been doing that for 12 years and we have done phenomenal things there and Willie you and I talked and I was really excited about you getting into to office and all the fun things we could do we have a sun-in courtyard that needs a lot of improvement I know that there was a a grant out there somewhere hopefully you know we'll be a part of that but we're doing really great um Christmas City spirits and our partner there has really done a ton for the sun in and that garage is right across the street that white box is right across from our Courtyard and with UNESCO coming and and everything I mean we're like so excited about what we're doing at the sun in to be a partner with all the other historic buildings that whatever goes in there is going to directly impact us I want it to be retail I want it to be vibrant I want it to be something that improves our downtown and our historic district but it's got to be like she said I mean how can we design something that is so many different facades and it doesn't go along with the the The Rock that's on the sun in or the building the brother house and all this other stuff that's in the historic district that I feel like should be more the the the outside and back to the hardboard not being able to approve it when you have a white box and it's all still one property I know they can't approve it because they don't even know what the facade is going to look like so anyway I just felt like I had to come up and say something on behalf of being in the historic just for so long and also the sun in and I mean I'm excited about what's going going to come but we have to know we have to have all our information why this even got to the hardboard already to me was really hard to understand because it wasn't even complete so all right thank you thank you so anybody else in in the center want to make public comment does anyone to the right want to make public comment seriously all right uh thank you all for coming out tonight um this meeting is adjourned can I question are we