The City of Phoenix approved a proposal Wednesday for the construction of a $17 million parking garage downtown.
The Boyer Company gained approval as the real-estate developer for the garage, which is expected to create “hundreds of jobs,” according to a city meeting agenda.
The garage will serve the growing Phoenix Biomedical Campus and will be on the southeast corner of Fillmore and Fifth streets. Construction is scheduled to start in November 2012 and be complete by early February 2014.
Current surface parking lots have provided adequate parking for the biomedical campus, according to the council’s agenda, but future growth may necessitate more parking.
“They’re already at capacity,” said Matt Jensen, senior project manager with Boyer. “If (the University of Arizona’s) medical school starts to grow, there’s no place to park. They would have to start busing.”
The site is approximately 60,000 square feet and owned by the city. The garage will come at no cost to the city’s general fund because Boyer will lease the land from the city and finance the construction, Jensen said.
“All the people on campus that are already there would lease stalls on the parking structure,” said Jensen, adding his company will manage the property over a 50-year leasing period with the option of a 10-year renewal. At the end of the leasing period, the structure will revert to the city at no cost.
Jensen added the garage will be built so future retail development is possible, to accommodate city zoning requirements.
Sean Sweat, a downtown community advocate and urban-transportation expert, said the garage would be unnecessary and detrimental to pedestrianism in the area.
“The whole point of being somewhere near the light rail is supposed to mean they find other transportation options,” Sweat said.
Sweat said the garage would create a wall between the biomedical campus and the rest of the area, killing the pedestrian vibrancy.
“Even if they put in ground-floor retail, it doesn’t create residential or commercial density. It just creates car storage,” Sweat said.
Sweat previously protested the construction of a parking lot at First and Taylor streets, five blocks away from where the biomedical parking lot would be built, citing the harm it would do to pedestrianism. He proposed that the city use half the land for a dog park.
Contact the reporter at jessica.zook@asu.edu
