City Asked To Commit To Downtown Garage Proposal For Office Tower And Garage Could Have Library At Ground Level

Developers want the Lake City’s Urban Renewal Agency to pay for a proposed $2.5 million parking garage by March.

It will be difficult to maintain options to buy the land for the project for longer than two months, Jim Frank, president of Greenstone-Kootenai Corp., said during a presentation to the urban renewal group Friday.

But before the agency makes its move it will have to have economic data to prove the project will pay its way, said Charlie Nipp, chairman of the agency. And that information needs to come “as quickly as you can get it to us,” Nipp said.

Frank promised to compile the data immediately - perhaps in time for the agency’s Jan. 21 meeting.

The parking garage would be built in conjunction with a drive-in bank and tower housing offices and condominiums. The 11-story tower would go at the corner of Sherman Avenue and Second Street, where the Wilma Theatre stood until it collapsed under heavy snows last winter.

Washington Trust Bank would own space in the tower. Some of it would be leased to other businesses. The top floors would be sold as condominiums.

The combination parking garage and drive-in bank would sit along Lakeside Avenue, between Second and Third streets. That parking garage also could house a library, Frank said.

Frank’s group would build a concrete building, with three floors of parking atop a street-level space that could be used by a library or be leased to businesses. Only the parking levels will be finished.

The library level would be left as a concrete shell that the city could finish for about half the cost of building a free-standing building, Frank said.

The tower proposed at the old Wilma Theatre site will have a taxable value between $10 million and $14 million. That will generate between $150,000 and $200,000 a year in tax-increment money - enough to pay for most but not all of the parking garage, Frank said.

Greenstone-Kootenai could build the garage and lease it back to the city until there is enough tax increment money to underwrite the city’s purchase, he said. The tower will require 60 of the 170 parking spaces in the three-story parking garage and Greenstone wants some clause giving them rights to those spaces after the city takes over ownership.

Frank’s group will not acquire the land and build the tower unless the Urban Renewal Agency commits tax-increment financing to the parking garage. Last month, the City Council passed a plan allowing the city to take money from the increase in tax collections from new downtown construction and use them to finance streets, sewers and parking.

In other business, the Urban Renewal Agency met with the Coeur d’Alene Downtown Association and the Lake City Coalition and agreed to start drafting qualifications for a new downtown association director. Revenue from parking fines may be used to boost the salary for that new director.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT The Urban Renewal Agency wants economic data on the project. Jim Frank, president of Greenstone-Kootenai Corp., promised to compile the figures immediately perhaps in time for a Jan. 21 meeting.