ORDER-2015-202 : Authorizing a Bond in the Amount of $400,000 for the Purchase of Real Property

Transcript (~20 min @ 45:52)

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▶ 45:52 Peter D. Mortimer: 2015-202, authorizing a bond in the amount of $400,000 for the purchase of real property.

▶ 46:09 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Wright, please.

▶ 46:10 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Make a motion to suspend the rules for the purposes of having city officials come forward.

▶ 46:14 Peter D. Mortimer: Second. Alderman Wright has made a motion to suspend the rules for the purposes of having the relevant city officials appear before us. And give us a little discourse about this order. Ladies and gentlemen, please proceed. That was seconded, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Seconded by Alderman Boyce L for the record. Any opposed, hearing none, we're already under suspension, but we're resuspended.

▶ 46:45 Speaker 9: Good evening, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 46:46 Peter D. Mortimer: Good evening. This is City, for the record, this is City Solicitor Van Campen. For anybody in the gallery or anybody watching at home, City Solicitor Van Campen, who's about to speak.

▶ 46:56 Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm joined by City Planner Denise Gaffey, Director of Public Works John Shenner, and City Treasurer Art Flavin is here as well to answer any questions members may have. preparing this evening's order and presenting it to you mayor dolan has asked me to read a statement to the members of the committee for the benefit of the public so i will do so at this time as you are aware the city of melrose has an agreement to purchase the property at one kimball court this historic acquisition is contingent on your approval of funding this acquisition i truly believe this is an historic once in a generation opportunity to expand parking in our downtown and provide further economic opportunities for our downtown business district in voting on this order i ask that you please consider the following items the asking price for the property was 425 thousand dollars the current assessment on the property is 373 thousand dollars but the city is able to acquire it for three hundred thousand dollars the department of of Public Works estimates approximately $100,000 for design, demolition, construction, site work and other professional services. As you are aware, very few properties in the hot Melrose real estate market sell for the asking price, let alone below it. In this case, dramatically below it. For us to be able to achieve this goal of increased parking, in this case it would be between 21 and 23 parking spaces at this price is truly incredible I would like to publicly thank judge Killam and his family for their civic-mindedness and working closely with us to make this transaction a reality although there have been other perhaps more generous offers for this property I am aware that judge Killam is pleased that the city will be able to expand parking in its downtown business district as a result of this purchase this is a reflection of his many contributions to the community as well as those of his father who purchased the building during World War two when it was an 11-room multifamily dwelling and established his law practice in the building in 1959 it is very important for me and for judge Killam to recognize this legacy through this purpose purchase we have a multi tiered approach to improving parking downtown that has been ongoing and has made progress over the past few years as you know we have a parking committee that has made improvements including adding spaces to Dill's Court through the reconfiguration of parking spaces improved drainage improved snow removal better signage and public education of a parking access another group has been working over the last several months on a plan to address the issue of employee parking which will released in the fall the fact remains however that although a study has been conducted to talk about additional parking any opportunity to increase spaces in such a significant way is a game changing opportunity for our community in review of possible properties this is the only parcel whose cost is within the range of affordability for the city the other properties in the district would sell for far more double or triple what the city would pay in this instance this is a unique parcel that has not been used for several years that was mentioned earlier and its strategic positioning allows for the most parking per square foot without disrupting any other property or the flow of traffic into the dills parking lot i have already shared with you the considerable interest as well as the actual purchasing of property in our downtown one example being Moynihan Plaza this trend is not going to end the downtown has evolved over the last decade and will continue to evolve and we must as a city prepare for that in advance nothing is cheaper than it is today and four hundred thousand dollars to purchase and construct an extension of the Dill's Court parking lot is an outstanding deal for taxpayers in the coming years as it is today I ask for your full consideration and your positive vote on this order those are mayor Dolan's words and I just want to mention to members of the committee that the agreement that is presently in process would result in a purchase price of three hundred thousand dollars for this property we're targeting based upon the information that was contained in your packet 23 additional parking spots which would reflect the size of the current parking spots that already exist in that lot and we're here to any answer any questions that members may have about the transaction itself the design work or any other parking analysis that we're conducting Thank You city

▶ 51:44 Peter D. Mortimer: solicitor van Kampen alderman boys out please any documentation that you

▶ 51:48 Robert A. Boisselle: submitted the overlay of the parking lot and so forth you've done the designs landscaping and labeling and so forth I don't is there any lighting in this parking lot I don't see any lights to light up the parking lot at night I know the house itself had lights that sort of lit up the area but now it doesn't seem there isn't any sort of illumination of the area is that will that be a problem

▶ 52:22 Speaker 10: use existing utility poles whether they be on myrtle or in the parking lot itself to

▶ 52:32 Robert A. Boisselle: okay so check some wall light is this part of the lighting program that we that was discussed

▶ 52:37 Speaker 10: in the past concerning we can try to incorporate it with that or we'll just do it all right uh is

▶ 52:41 Robert A. Boisselle: there any thought for these 21 spaces i mean there was discussion concerning permit parking using any of these spaces for permit parking um i think they would i think i believe they would end

▶ 52:55 Denise Gaffey: up being utilized the same way that the rest of the spaces well in in the original aspects in

▶ 53:00 Robert A. Boisselle: front of the or behind the building there were 12 permitted spots i believe and you're knocking out one two three four five six seven of those so are they going to be incorporated into the 21

▶ 53:21 Denise Gaffey: spaces I'm not I'm not aware of the permitted status that you're referring to is there signage

▶ 53:27 Robert A. Boisselle: in yeah there signage all along each spark each parking spot has a sign that's associated there so the other permits going to be extended into this parking space I believe the idea would be

▶ 53:38 Denise Gaffey: to make all of these three-hour spaces just like the rest of the parking lot any any signage that might reflect a different type of status is going to be eliminated when we modify the plan later this year with the new parking permit our merchant permit program so it'll all be three-hour parking all right the cost of the

▶ 54:03 Robert A. Boisselle: parking lot according to documentation here came up to ninety nine thousand nine hundred and sixty four dollars and when you divide that into by 21 particular sites comes out to about forty four thousand seven hundred and sixty which is pretty close to the standard nationwide between four thousand and six thousand dollars for a parking space development and so forth so that's there John you gave some pretty good numbers here and very right on target with this but the total project cost comes up to six hundred and seventy five thousand

▶ 54:46 Robert A. Boisselle: dollars basically you're borrowing money here I mean three hundred thousand gives you two hundred and thirty four thousand coming back a print is small so you can

▶ 55:04 Robert A. Boisselle: need a magnifying glass to see this and the one hundred thousand you're borrowing gives you you're paying forty thousand so it's a hundred and forty thousand for the construction and just about five hundred five thousand sorry five hundred thirty four thousand seven hundred dollars so the total project in the long run is six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars I just want to make that clear when you add in all the interest to this project and if you do year use a 200 foot square area and you're paying about 161 dollars a square foot on that so the parking is needed the taking away of a business which well

▶ 55:46 Robert A. Boisselle: the business has no one has actually made any effort for the building itself so that no one's interested in the building to do any parking and they're not interested in converting it to any home because of the homes in the other way now you're going to eliminate the Kimball Court Street or roadway is that

▶ 56:12 Robert A. Boisselle: correct you're shifting it into the center of the parking lot but you're

▶ 56:21 Robert A. Boisselle: giving access to I guess I guess it's the VFW access to their driveway okay so are taking up two two parking spaces to get that driveway through technically yeah yeah okay and

▶ 56:36 Speaker 10: that's the existing width of their existing driveway a lot of space and a half all right

▶ 56:42 Robert A. Boisselle: very good thank you very much thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boy cell

▶ 56:53 Jaclyn L. Bird: anyone else wishing to be heard alderman bird please thank you mr chairman um miss gaffey could you talk a little bit about the history of how this particular project this particular um real estate transaction came about and when did we start looking at this as a potential um acquisition for parking how long has it been going on i've heard a couple of things tonight that i'm just trying to figure out it sounds like the property has been sitting vacant

▶ 57:17 Denise Gaffey: for a while i was wondering sort of has it been on the market for a long time and it but then it says we're putting in a low offer and they're accepting it i'm just trying to figure out a little bit of the history if you could give us that first i can try i don't i may not be able able to answer entirely I don't know exactly when the property came on the market or how long it is sat on the market I've heard it represented this evening as well that it's been three years sitting vacant and I don't know that it's been on the market for three years but I do think it has been vacant for quite some time I don't believe the city really began to actively pursue it until very recently maybe you can clarify that but I think it was it was recently and I think it's partly tied to to the fact that we have been working we've sort of brought the parking study back off the shelf to for the purpose of tackling the Merchant Park permit program and and I think so there's been some a lot of discussions with the committee about parking and in parking pressure and so I think I think it was just the awareness of the parking issue tied with the availability of this parcel that sort of got it to gel okay

▶ 58:33 Denise Gaffey: can you talk a little bit I know the master plan committee is forming and that that's in the works what is the time frame of that master planning committee coming about and how does this fit in are we jumping the gun on kind of moving forward on looking for the 23 spaces if we haven't really thought out kind of an overview for the whole city as far as parking can you talk a little bit about that I mean I'm sure that you always have to keep moving you have to stay in motion while you're planning I get that but at the same time this seems like a fairly good sized project and a good amount of money to borrow how does it fit in with the long-term vision for the city on parking so I think the I think the master planning process which is just getting underway and it's about a year-long process um is um is going to is is so broad in its scope it's really looking at so many so many different elements of the city from land use to open space to demographics and public facilities and and traffic it's not really a parking study per se i think the parking study that we did that was alluded to this evening um and back in 2012 is more relevant so i i think and i think this acquisition um kind of ties in more appropriately with that study than it does with the master plan so i don't think the the master plan and the fact that it's going to take a year to go through that process is um is is terribly germane or that we would want to necessarily postpone this acquisition for the completion of the master plan and what is the

▶ 1:00:12 Jaclyn L. Bird: time frame on going forward on this is there some sort of rush for trying to not rush but you know what is our time frame if it has been sitting vacant for quite some time you know personally i would like to have a little bit more time to kind of look at and hear more about some of the different concerns that were brought up tonight what is the time frame that we're looking at

▶ 1:00:33 Speaker 9: currently for this transaction um as far as time frame is concerned what i what i would say is there's no there's no set finish line at this point there's no closing date as the transaction contingent on funding approval from this from this body but i would say although we're not aware of how as we sit here tonight how long this has been on the market alderman what i will say is when the city became aware that there were no significant offers for the parcel it became clear that there was an opportunity to acquire a contiguous parcel to an existing municipal lot for a relatively low number which is why we made the offer we did back in June as far as timeline is concerned it's entirely dependent on public works if they have a particular timeline within which they'd like to build and do the demolition and then the construction but as far as the transaction is concerned there's no current timeline the only thing I could say is that because we are a municipality the city is not able to bind itself to an agreement right now without approval from this body so we would stand the chance of perhaps losing the deal if you will the longer we wait okay

▶ 1:01:52 Jaclyn L. Bird: miss Gaffey can you talk a little bit this and and one of the members of the public talked about this earlier as well and and I had the same reaction when I when I read about this proposal it seems to be a little bit in conflict with the of philosophy or trend that we've been going towards the last couple of years um about kind of with new projects and new developments going away from having tons of park excessive parking pushing pedestrian safety pushing bicycle safety all of that so i'm just kind of confused as to now why this is the big you know piece of the puzzle here can you talk a little bit about that are we moving away from that is this just part of the overall plan that we're looking for 23 space it seems like what we've heard of more and more and more is that we want less cars downtown you know as far as the congestion the traffic the wear and tear on the roads and all of that not to um put aside the concerns of the shops i completely understand their concerns as well i'm just it seems like it's in conflict with everything that we've heard over the past year or two as far as where

▶ 1:02:56 Denise Gaffey: we're going with development well i i guess um my philosophy with development you know has not change and is certainly in that in that general direction to towards less parking being needed especially for residential development especially for residential development in in areas that have excellent transit options like you know pretty like our neighborhood commercial areas and our areas along the oak grove t station and in our downtown i think that's true i think for for development purposes, we have seen that there is less of a need for residential parking. People are more interested in housing options where they can take advantage of public transit. And I think this situation is not necessarily incongruous with that. I think it's a different scenario. I think here we're talking about commercial parking or parking parking for our merchants and parking for our retail and I am you know I I agree with a lot of the comments that were mentioned earlier by by the resident who talked about the parking studies and and talked about the implementation of the permit parking program and I think that is going to make a big difference when we actually get that done later this year but the fact remains that the Dill's Court parking which is the this parking lot is what is called is um is the parking lot in the city that has the greatest pressure it is consistently the parking lot that that has the least amount of availability and that's that is consistent with the the data collection that we did there in fact we weren't even planning in our in the parking program that we roll out at the end of the year we weren't planning to identify any parking spaces as merchant parking through this new parking program in in this lot just because there's so much pressure in this lot already so so it we do think this is a this is a great opportunity and it isn't a nessus and it's a needed opportunity for the viability of the merchants downtown all right thank you and may I ask you to

▶ 1:05:08 Peter D. Mortimer: If we could pause your questions for a moment, under our rules, we need to convene the legal and legislative committee briefly. We'll open it, I presume, Chairman Tramontozzi, and then we'll bring it quickly to recess so we can proceed with this discussion about this order. And you will have the floor when we return. Alderman Burke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.