An anonymous source via email wrote
Ok, here’s the skinny on what’s going on with the Garden Theater site.
Kevin (one of the developers – I think there are two) and his partner have put in a request to buy up the public parking lot to the south. This lot includes the curb cut/right of way and the lot as it wraps behind Skully’s.
Kevin and his partner’s intentions:
1. Build a 2-3 story parking garage to connect to the garage being built at the garden site starting below grade and ending above. His stated intention is to replace the currently 60 public parking spaces in the garage, but no additional public parking spaces would be added. There may be a few spaces added as designated spaces (quasi-public) for the two commercial spaces, but they would not be open to the general public at all hours like the other 60.
2. Build two commercial retail spaces facing high and adjacent to Magnolias.
3. Build 15-20 condos/apartments above the garage ranging from 1, 2, and 3 bedrooms.
4. City would still technically own the public parking and likely would have to hire Parking Solutions, or another company to staff the garage.
Benefits to Kevin and his partner:
1. Building a connecting garage allow the placement of the garage ramps between levels to be moved to the current parking lot site and allows the Garden site to gain 25 more parking spaces (Kevin was non-committal on whether these would be for his tenants, but he wouldn’t rule it out – they would not be public parking).
2. No one else gets to buy the lot and build a competing development to the south of his garden site. This could be another condo site or just something ugly that he doesn’t want his tenants to have to look at.
Benefits to Short North Area businesses (Kevin’s stated benefits):
1. No one else buys the lot and builds a development that doesn’t replace 60 spaces and instead gets variances from the city to avoid doing so (see Jackson as reference case, they are only adding enough parking for their tenants alone – even though the plan is to add a fine dining restaurant at street level).
2. Increased density from the 15-20 condo/apartment additions.
Drawbacks to Kevin and his partner:
1. They are going to lose money on developing the parking lot site from building public parking (his stated cost is 20-30k per parking space). His cost is somewhere around 1.8m for replacing the public parking. Whether this causes the whole project to go negative, I’m not sure, but when someone asked if he would consider adding 80 public parking spaces, he said no.
Drawbacks to Short North Area Businesses:
1. Parking lot would be out of commision for at least 4 months. This is the only public parking lot north of the White Castle lot to the South though the available commercial space (52 spaces not counting the Garden site, or Kevin’s new proposal) is almost the densest of any area on High if you start at Liquid and go up to Stained Skin.
2. There’s no benefit in regaining the same 60 spaces, and two new commercial spaces would be less than a 4% increase in available commercial spaces on High alone in the area described above.
3. Density gain is minimal.
4. Skully’s likely lose all rear access, meaning deliveries have to be made in the front (i.e. trucks parking on High St. as in on campus).
5. No plan for alternate parking exists while the lot would be shutdown.
Some other random notes:
That lot represents 60-80% of the available parking on High St. without going off onto side streets, any shutdown for any length of time has the potential to drastically reduce business during high traffic times. Kevin’s not offering much in the way of carrots, the density growth is minimal, even for the Garden site (59 units), and the commercial units available in the area will be at an all time high once the Jackson and Garden sites are finished. The neighborhood just added 5 more retail spaces at that redevelopment just south of the Masonic Temple (and there’s no parking there that I can tell). If all this redevelopment goes through (not counting the parking lot) and the current empty commercial space gets filled (which accounts for about 30-40% of the space), then parking is going to be at a massive premium for these couple of blocks.
My opinion is that the upside is too limited, and the potential downsides too great, to support this proposal. Despite Kevin’s implied threats (or cautions, he wasn’t over-dramatic), I don’t see substantial risk in letting the parking lot sit because his commercial spaces in the Garden building are going to rely on the lot (whether they have designated spaces in his Garden garage) as soon as they come online.
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