The Janesville Plan Commission’s recommendation to the city council was unanimous: Do not declare a city parking lot in the center of downtown as surplus property.
The decision came Monday after the plan commission allowed business operators to sound off on city plans to hand the half-acre North Parker lot to Bear Development. Bear wants to build 78 units of subsidized apartments there.
Most said they think North Parker is the wrong place for family apartments. They worry subsidized housing could chase away local investors who want to spend on the continued revival of downtown’s riverfront as a shopping and dining district.
Plan commission and Janesville City Council member Larry Squire says Bear’s housing plan off North Parker Drive would knock out too much parking that’s needed in the dining and retail center of downtown.
Bear’s plans emerged quietly out of private discussions in City Hall that rolled for weeks outside of public view. The projet would come amid what downtown operators say is two storefront redevelopment projects a block away that would pump millions of dollars of reinvestment into an ongoing, decade-long public-private revamp of downtown spaces and privately-owned storefronts.
Heidi Miller, principal at the nearby Saint Mary School, says there is no grass anywhere near the North Parker site — no place for children to play.
Miller worries subsidized housing next door at the Norther Parker lot bottle up dozens of children in a place where the only public play areas are alongside taverns, or in the North Parker Drive city parking deck just across the street.
Some others who spoke Monday, including plan commission members, said the parking deck has become rife with vagrancy and shows signs of becoming run down.
Plan commission member Paul Williams made the motion to advise against a North Parker Drive land conveyance. Williams says he toured the parking deck over the weekend, and he says he was shocked at the number of lights out in the parking deck.
Williams said there are places he wouldn’t go in the parking deck, including an upper level, the elevator and the stairwell areas. He says the physical signs of vagrancy in those spots are evident to the eye — and the nose. Williams and plan commission member Deb Dongarra said they expect the city to investigate and address mounting problems at the parking deck.
Some recommended the city work to spur housing developer interest in a few other spots downtown — such as a block of privately-owned land along Centerway that has a vacant, fast-food restaurant and a grass lot. They said a parcel like that could lend itself better to housing than the largely paved stretch of North Parker.
Even as the plan commission recommended against a surplus property declaration at North Parker, commission member Douglas Marklein cautioned against the city taking a stance that might shoo away residential developers.
He points out Bear Development’s “strike one” came earlier when it learned a city site off Rockport Road it eyed for apartments for year was not workable for a multi-story apartment building. Marklein says “strike two” is the city plan commission’s recommendation to take the North Parker property off the table.
He worries Bear Development might consider business operators’ resistance to its North Parker plan “strike three,” and walk away from developing in Janesville altogether.
City Manager Kevin Lahner told the plan commission the city moved forward quietly and quickly to ready a North Parker Drive property transfer to help Bear Development get positioned for at least $2.5 million in state and federal housing funds.
Plus, Lahner said, Bear seeks to tap another pot of tax credits it would have to get signed up for this month to meet application deadlines. Having access to a property would help Bear make a better pitch for those credits.
The plan commission’s negative recommendation goes to the city council May 27 for a final vote.
