State Street Garage Expansion- October 19, 2012

Thanks to all those who attended our Public Hearing on October 11, 2012 at the East Tennessee History Center. Our next meeting will likely be scheduled at the end of November.
We are planning to begin some of the foundation work next week both inside and outside of the garage. In order to accomplish this, we plan to remove parking on the west side of Central Avenue along the garage to accommodate the equipment that we plan to use. Unfortunately we will also lose some of the trees in this process but we have a planting program which will follow our construction and we plan to make this area look even better when we are finished here.

Some of the work will also be done inside the building and here are a few pictures of this area.

This lowest part of the garage is used by the City of Knoxville for storage and also a holding area for government surplus property. Much of this is destined for http://www.govdeals.com/. We started offering our surplus property online in this form a while back and have had excellent response. Here are a couple more of the pictures depicting original construction as provided by Retenbach Constructors, Inc.

At the public meeting we shared that we have decided to build the overpass from the current top level of the garage to the landing near the escalator out of precast concrete. We feel this is a much nicer look than using a steel span and should make the work installation faster. We have also decided to build a roof over the new overpass and are still making decisions about that look. The picture below is a rendering of the precast look without the roof.

We also discussed ways in which we can communicate garage impacts on those parking there. We have around  600 monthly parkers and average around 150 transient parkers. The garage capacity is just over 800 so managing parking here is going to be challenging.   CDM Smith and McCarty Holsaple McCarty folks are helping me with pictures and renderings to share with you which will show the various areas that will be impacted by construction, probably on a weekly basis, when we begin the major effort. Since issues can arise quickly, I also plan to send an email to those on my State Street Garage update list. Republic Parking is our parking lot manager and they will also send info to those monthly parkers from their contact list.

It is going to be another busy weekend downtown so please take your time and have fun.
As always, thanks for your interest in Downtown Knoxville and this project.