City pumps brakes on parking garage renovation, explores alternative options

LACONIA — The Laconia City Council is keeping its options open for the future of the downtown parking garage. Councilors came to a consensus in favor of collecting expressions of interest from private parties about what to do with the second two floors of the building owned by the city at Monday's council meeting.

“Wouldn’t it be in the best interest of the city — before we commit $6, $8, $10 million to a renovation — to at least get some sense of [whether there is] anyone out there that could take a look at this garage and have an innovative idea as to what they could do with it,” said Mayor Andrew Hosmer, who had requested that the garage be a formal item of discussion at the meeting.

Last year the council voted in support of a rehabilitation of the garage, currently beleaguered by safety and structural concerns and largely unused by the public, rather than tearing it down or rebuilding it completely. Plans toward that end remain in the design stage, per the timeline presented at a public forum in October. At that forum, Public Works Director Wes Anderson said the project was slated to cost between $8.6 million and $12.3 million, depending on the final design.

The council previously landed on rehabilitation as the most cost-effective option, given Anderson’s estimates that a full rebuild would cost the most, and demolition alone would still present a sizable price tag. But with the skyrocketing costs of materials and instruction, in addition to general inflation, the costs of the city itself undertaking the garage project are escalating. 

Given the growing financial hurdles posed by that endeavor, and the results of a recent parking study indicating that the garage may not be essential for sufficient parking capacity in the downtown area, Hosmer proposed the city pump the brakes. 

The study found that, within 10 years, the city would be a few dozen spaces short during peak hours if in-person work resumed in full and the development and business climates rebound successfully. Currently, even during peak parking hours in summer, non-street parking downtown was about half full, and the study found parking capacity downtown to be largely adequate, even if the garage were completely closed.

“Ultimately I’d like to save the city $10 million” that could go toward more dire needs such as housing, Hosmer said. Consequently, he proposed that the city put out a request for expressions of interest from private developers.

Councilors Robert Soucy and Mark Haynes were vocally supportive of Hosmer’s suggestion.

Soucy underlined that the city should remain open to a wide range of proposals for the future of the garage and Haynes echoed Hosmer’s concerns about cost. 

Haynes felt, after seeing the parking study, that he “couldn’t go forward on the parking garage — either a new one or revitalizing this one.” He added that “the citizenry of this city has made it very clear that it’s not something that they would support.” 

Seeking expressions of interest does not necessarily mean the city has abandoned the plan to rehab the garage. 

While “we haven’t made such a significant commitment that we’re in too far to turn back at this point,” Hosmer said, “We can still continue on during this period so we’re moving on two parallel paths.”

According to City Manager Kirk Beattie, the city has committed about $36,000 to $40,000 thus far on the design phase. Continued safety upkeep of the garage — which is still used largely by employees of the businesses on the first floor of the structure — would cost at least another $30,000, Beattie estimated. 

At the meeting Beattie mentioned that an open-ended request for expressions of interest, such as the one used for the former Holy Trinity School project, could be used as a model here, but the timeline and details of that request were not finalized. The city manager’s office could not be reached Tuesday for details.