Uniontown to borrow $2 million
The city of Uniontown should have a bank’s commitment to a $2 million loan that it will use to complete a required match for state funding to build a new parking garage downtown, and select an architectural firm to design the structure in two weeks. City Councilman Bob Cerjanec, director of accounts and finance, said construction would start this spring or summer and take about a year to complete.
“If we start in March, we’ll be done on or before March 2006,” Cerjanec said.
The garage would have an estimated 300 spaces and be built at the site of the city parking lot at the corner of Penn Street and North Gallatin Avenue.
The city council has considered a number of ways to match $3.15 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) money that Gov. Edward Rendell allocated last spring for a variety of downtown revitalization projects.
Private investment in the revitalization effort from Joseph A. Hardy III allowed the city to direct the entire state allocation to the garage, which was one of the original projects in the downtown plan.
Cerjanec said the match, which was detailed in a formal RACP application the city sent to Harrisburg in early January, will come from three sources.
About $1 million from the $2 million loan will count toward the match, Cerjanec said. The money will be used as interim financing to “kick start” construction, and the bank will be reimbursed from the RACP money.
The state, he said, is not requiring the city to obtain interim financing for the entire cost of the project.
Half of the remaining $1 million will pay for “soft costs” – engineering, administrative and legal expenses – for the garage, while the other $500,000 will cover the soft costs for converting the right lane of Main Street into parking spaces.
The soft costs for the Main Street parking spaces also include required traffic studies. The spaces are still considered temporary, and additional traffic studies will be required before the spaces become permanent.
The other two sources for the match are in-kind contributions.
One is approximately $1.2 million Hardy spent on materials used to spruce up Main Street, and the other is the $900,000 the county used to renovate the Federal Building on Peter Street.
Cerjanec said he is negotiating terms of the loan, and the interest rate for a two-year general obligation note is expected to be around 2.3 percent.
He said the proposed loan agreement calls for the city to make interest payments for two years and then negotiate permanent financing for the balance at that time.
Revenue generated by the parking garage will be used to pay off the loan, and the debt will not require a tax increase, he said.
Meanwhile, the city and Fay-Penn Economic Development Council, the project administrator, are reviewing proposals from architects to design the garage.
In the requests for proposals (RFP) that they sent to architectural firms, the city and Fay-Penn asked them to include any experience they have in designing garages.
Cerjanec said the RFP did not specify the number of parking spaces, levels or entrances. Instead, the RFP instructed the firms to “tell us what you can do for the $3.15 million,” he said.
Each proposal received included conceptual drawings of the garage.
He said he did not know whether the council has to conduct a public meeting to hire the architect, but the firm that is hired will be instructed to begin designing the garage immediately.
Cerjanec said the architect will be selected within two weeks, and he anticipates receiving a formal commitment from the bank in the same time period.