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Week of Thursday, November 27, 2003City parking lots By DAVE
MELCHIOR Next year could be quite a busy year for projects in downtown Ypsilanti. The Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority will ask the City Council at its next meeting on Dec. 2 to approve almost $1 million in bonds to continue the Streetscape program with improvements to city parking lots and new signs to help motorists find various locations downtown. Jennifer Goulet, director of the Downtown Development Authority, said the DDA Board voted last Thursday to ask the Council to approve issuing $995,000 in bonds to pay for the work. If all goes according to schedule, the work could begin next spring, she said. Downtown also is scheduled to be the main focus for the multi-year street repair program. The Streetscape effort already has brought brick sidewalks and plantings and the median on Michigan Avenue to the downtown area. The next phase is to improve the city’s parking lots, including landscaping, and signs directing motorists. The lots scheduled for work are the North and South Huron lots and the Adams Street lot. Goulet said all of the work was expected to cost $1.3 million, but the DDA decided to seek just under $1 million in bonds because the cost of such a bond is much less than for bonds of $1 million or more. "It doesn’t make sense to seek more than $1 million unless it is substantially more than $1 million," said Goulet. Consequently, she said, the DDA would seek grants and ways to phase in less essential work later. She said the parts of the proposal that will make downtown more "safe and workable" would get first attention if the City Council approves issuing the bonds. "If all goes according to plan, we could be looking at construction next season," said Goulet. The critical issue for scheduling the work will be staging it so that not all of the city parking lots are affected at the same time. She said officials will keep as many parking places open as possible without raising the cost of the work or extending the time it takes to complete it all too far. The bonds will be repaid through tax increment financing. That mechanism sets aside increased taxes from improvements to private property in the designated area to finance public projects within the DDA’s boundaries. The City of Ypsilanti has two DDAs, the one downtown and another one that includes Depot Town and West Cross Street to Eastern Michigan University. |
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