Cedar Rapids looking to jazz up new parking ramp

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city is preparing to start construction this summer on a new parking ramp across First Avenue East from the city-owned hotel and Convention Complex, a ramp that may be bigger and more attractive with more first-floor retail space and a faster elevator than planned if the city receives favorable project bids.

The city puts the estimated cost of the ramp at $10.5 million and the skywalk at $1 million. Bids will be opened on May 2.

In addition to the basic bids for the ramp and skywalk, the city is asking contractors to provide four alternate bids for additions to the basic project if the base bids are favorable and the City Council chooses to fund them.

The first add-on would provide a more-attractive exterior cladding on the side of the ramp that faces Second Avenue SE, a cladding that is part of the basic bid for the two sides visible to First Avenue SE. The fourth side, next to the Theatre Cedar Rapids building, won't be noticeable.

The second add-on would add a seventh floor to the ramp. The basic bid calls for six floors and 460 parking spaces and the add-on would make the ramp a seven-story one with an additional 75 parking spaces.

The third add-on would provide for more first-floor retail space on the side of the ramp facing First Avenue SE than is called for in the basic bid.

And a fourth add-on would provide a faster elevator.

Sandy Pumphrey, building facilities capital project manager in the city's Public Works Department, on Monday said that the “stakeholder” group advising the city on the parking ramp feels an attractive facade is an important part of a ramp located in a “prime” downtown spot. The group is hoping that favorable bid prices also allow for the seventh level to be added to the project, he said.

John Frew, the city's consulting project manager on the hotel and Convention Complex projects, on Monday said cities often work to add some style to parking ramps in the heart of their downtowns by adding retail areas to the first floor and paying attention to facades.

“There is a range and it's a combination of functionality and style,” Frew said. “This could be just nothing but parking from the first floor to the top. And you could walk right by it, and say, ‘That's a parking ramp,' because it's unmistakable what they look like. ... But it's pretty unusual to build a parking ramp right in the core of the city that doesn't have some design feature to it.”

Frew said the new parking ramp across from the hotel with parking dedicated to the hotel will better position the city, which bought the hotel from its creditors a year ago, to sell the hotel in the future.

Pumphrey said the city is still studying options to connect the skywalk from the new parking ramp to the rest of the city's downtown skywalk system south of First Avenue East.

Revenue from parking is expected to pay much of the cost of the debt being taken on to pay for the new parking ramp, construction of which should be complete in the spring of 2013, Pumphrey said.

The city's hotel and Convention Complex will be known as The DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center when the renovation of the hotel and attached arena and the construction of the new convention center next door is complete in 2013.

Another ramp

The City Council's budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 also includes funding of $12 million for a second new parking ramp, this one in the 600 block of Second Street SE in the vicinity of the new federal courthouse.

This ramp may have 595 spaces on six floors, but the final design is not complete. Construction is expected to be complete in the summer or fall of 2013.