FAYETTEVILLE -- The city is going to have to reevaluate the plan for the parking deck associated with the arts corridor downtown after a council vote Tuesday, an administrator said.
The City Council voted 3-3 on an adjustment to the contract with Nabholz Construction to build a parking deck northwest of Dickson Street and West Avenue. The resolution needed at least five votes to pass.
Council member Sonia Gutiérrez Harvey was absent and Matthew Petty's vacant seat remains to be filled after a special election Feb. 8.
The contract adjustment would have set a guaranteed maximum price to build the deck. It represented the balance of work to complete the project, said Wade Abernathy, the city's facilities manager. Total cost of the deck, including construction and soft costs, would be $13.2 million, he said.
Last month, Chief Financial Officer Paul Becker told the council during an agenda-setting session that the cost of the deck would exceed initial estimates. The city estimated the deck would cost $10 million in 2018. The pandemic caused labor and supply shortages, and projects across the board are costing about 30% more than usual, he said.
To make up the difference, the council would either need to pull money from the rest of the arts corridor budget, or use reserve money, Becker said at the time. Abernathy said staff cut about $1.3 million out of the design for the deck to reduce costs.
Voters in 2019 approved a $31.6 million bond issue to build a cultural arts corridor downtown. The project involves turning the Walton Arts Center parking lot into an outdoor civic space for gathering and events. A parking deck is proposed at the northwest corner of Dickson Street and West Avenue, across the street from Watson Street. The deck is meant to replace the 290 spaces lost once the Walton Arts Center lot becomes the civic space.
The timeline was to finish the parking deck construction by January 2023 and the civic space by early 2024.
After the discussion, Becker said the council's vote came as a surprise. He had told the council about the expected costs. If the vote holds, the timetable will change, and costs will increase over time, he said. Administrators had promised to hold off on construction of the civic space until the deck was complete.
"We're going to have to come back and reevaluate the entire plan and see where it goes from there," Becker said.
Council members D'Andre Jones, Mark Kinion and Teresa Turk voted against the adjustment to the contract.
Turk said she was against putting the deck at its proposed location. She said she had concerns over the deal that has been under negotiation for months with the private landowners of the lot where the deck would go.
"I'm not surprised the costs are going up, and I do think it's extravagant," Turk said. "As I have expressed before, I've not been happy with this entire process."
Kinion echoed Turk's concerns with his vote. Jones did not say why he voted against.
Council members are allowed to reconsider votes for past items.
Bo Counts, owner of Pinpoint pinball bar, told the council he felt the time wasn't right to spend millions of dollars on the arts corridor project. Several business owners struggled or did not survive the pandemic, and the city's plans seemed out of touch, he said.
In other business, the council supported 6-0 the renaming of a portion of Porter Road after Officer Stephen Carr, who was shot to death Dec. 7, 2019. Tuesday was Dec. 7.
The road is where the city's new police headquarters will be located. With the vote, the section of Porter Road stretching from Mount Comfort Road south to Deane Street will be renamed Stephen Carr Memorial Boulevard.
The council also approved a $190.7 million budget for next year. The budget is $18.9 million more than this year's budget, and includes more than 24 additional fulltime-equivalent positions. It also includes two salary increases for employees that the council approved this year and will apply to next year. The council deferred raises for employees in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Council action
Fayetteville’s City Council met Tuesday and approved:
• Raising the pay of water and sewer line workers by $3 per hour to retain the city’s workforce.
• Annexing land at the southeast edge of town and rezoning about 101 acres on South Black Oak Road for a planned mixed-use subdivision and park area.
Source: Fayetteville