okay it looks like it's streaming
okay i'd like to call to order our
downtown parking committee
um welcome everybody on the board
um to include the public um
so it's 402 pm
and um next i'm cassandra ganda
chair of the um downtown parking
committee
um and um i'd like to get
um a motion to approve the minutes
of march 12 2020.
go move okay moved um by
michael white can i get a second second
second by heather um pollard
um mandy you want to call the roll or
all in favor i guess really how we do it
i did see a typo that i was gonna oh
typo my
george i knew it okay
line thirty three it says the
instead of there okay
get that
got it thank you yes thank you all right
now with the correction
on line 33 um can we get a motion to
approve
with correction
okay heather all in favor signify by
saying aye
hi hi opposition
okay it passes um
there is no action items at this point
um and um up on the agenda
is the parking storage mandy
thank you councillor ganda that's it's
actually parking lot signage
sorry that's okay and actually what i'm
gonna do is i'm gonna hand it off to liz
vega
and i just like to let the committee
know that um for the last couple of
years
i have been overseeing both business
development and
downtown and so we have recently made a
change in the department we're going to
separate those items
and i'll be sticking with business
development and so liz will be the new
downtown
manager and so we've been slowly
transitioning different items to her and
so she will be the new liaison for
this committee and so with that i
started working with both her and eric
martin to about this issue and so i'll
just give you a quick history
update last time we met which was all
the way back in march
we um it was brought up to the committee
that there was several
public lots that were not signed and
one of those um well this is going to go
over those and so we
we just wanted to bring to the committee
what was signed what is not signed
and then talk through some options for
signage eric
had some questions about how we make
sure that things are consistent moving
forward
and so with that i'm just going to hand
it over to liz
she's got a presentation and then the
committee can talk about the different
issues so thank you very much to
everyone on the committee
it's been a great pleasure and i leave
you in very good hands with liz
andy for that introduction everyone can
hear me okay and see the screen
fantastic so as mandy said we're going
to be discussing
the parking lot signage and she uh
she did give me an overview of what the
background
information has been so most of the
existing public parking lots that we
have in the downtown area
do have identifying signage most of them
are numbered
there are four public lots that we have
identified that currently do
not have signage attached to them
those are at bowman and church maine and
bowman
campos street right behind american
linen
and water street and cruises avenue las
cruces avenue
which is right behind the rio grande
theater and i do have some maps that
will show those
a couple of slides so new signage that
would match what we already have
downtown
would cost between 700 dollars and a
thousand dollars per sign
that's kind of dependent on where the
location of the sign
where it is put what kind of material is
already there
um and i believe that the committee has
discussed
us replacing the numbering to
a p for parking and so we're not having
to remember
all of the signs going forward and just
want to let you know that we have not
identified funding for the signs yet
we may be able to incorporate some of
them into
development that's happening downtown so
the existing signs
these are the current signs a lot of you
will be familiar with them
and these are the
locations of the parking lots that
currently do not do not have signs
so this is the bowman church and also
the maine and bowman
so you can see these are actually the
two lots here in the slot right here as
well
one on campus street is right uh caddy
corner to city hall
and this is right behind the american
linen this is also a public lot
and then we have behind the rio grande
theater here on water street and las
cruces avenue
um and then i do also believe that the
committee has discussed
that replacing potentially replacing all
of the public parking lot signage
may not be in the best interest because
of all of the development that's
happening downtown in the next couple of
years
um i did want to mention that to the
committee
bringing that back up and that's all i
have for the presentation but we're here
for
questions and we can begin the
discussion at the chair's discussion
thank you thank you liz i appreciate the
presentation um is there any questions
mr pearson so i remember some discussion
we had about
color coding some of the signs so that
like the north side
might be green south signs orange or
something so i just wanted to
remind that in our discussion
i i agree george we had
talked about color coding um liz is that
something that
can happen or was it discussed and can
it be incorporated
uh definitely put that into the
discussion i just wrote a note about
that to
get with eric and mandy to see um what
type of
planning has already been done for the
color coding but we'll
definitely look into that
okay
tiffany miss thompson
um the parking lot down on bowman
and
oh you're you're i think you're muted
tiffany
sorry about that um the parking lot at
bowman and maine part of that is owned
by the new america school is that
correct
i'm going to defer that question to eric
martin
um good afternoon madam chair um eric
martin with the public works facilities
um when we talk about the corner as far
as bowman
church it is just the kind of the pizza
slice
piece right over in the corner where the
bend is
uh in the road so new america's school
owns their parking lot on the other side
so we're talking about
just that curved portion right there
that's ours that's city
thank you
excuse me counselor
yes jenny um sorry i can't find my
little hand arrays i apologize for that
um can what is the purpose of
the color coding it's i mean in my mind
i'm like thinking if we
is is it cheaper to order things all the
same color
and uniformed or is there a
is there a purpose for the south north
other than our own
liking of colors eric or mandy do you
want to take that
sure um on the signage one of the things
that
i did and asked staff to do
was went out because we were trying to
track down
who actually made those signs for us we
know
parks and rec uh reaction had provided
some assistance some in terms of
landscaping things like that but i was
talking to
my maintenance supervisor anthony reno
earlier this afternoon
and actually sandoval
construction had actually had the signs
fabricated
so they're updating some costs and
things so i'll have some more
information
tomorrow but the center of the sign is
removable
and it looks like it was just a vinyl
overlay which is what we've used for a
lot of
other signs um so we're seeing what it
would take
to change if we wanted to do that
right now the numbering is out of
sequence um
so you'll see where the signs jump from
one to three four
five six there's no seven or eight and
then you've got
uh you know uh a handful of others plus
we have the um
other lots across from uh cvb or uh
visit las cruces rather
um that have not had signage and so as
mandy and liz and i have spoken
when development occurs we're going to
probably end up with more
out of sequence numbering now we know
some of the vendors
use those numbers to reference and say
hey look for me at lot 14 or whatever
that number is
but then we're kind of chasing our tails
on that because then every time
something changes we've got to come back
and either reprint the sign
or do something different so that's
where we're talking either using a p
or if we got away from the numbering
altogether then we could say we could
call this the orange lot the silver lot
the purple lot the red lot
and so we could use both color but then
we'd also have to put the color name
on there so we're addressing anybody
that might be color blind
and cannot to distinguish on those
colors but they are a vinyl overlay they
are removable that the center can be
unbolted
um and we certainly could get a cost on
that
that good jen any feedback
no i think that sounds good i and it
makes more sense if they were
instead of labeled with numbers labeled
with colors and
i just was thinking maybe you're going
to replace maybe the whole sign instead
of just the center apart but trying to
replace the whole sign
with coloring and that concern me so
cool
mandy i i think eric answered most of
the questions just i just wanted to run
back
the history and some of that discussion
was we had that
like eric mentioned the numbers are out
of sequence we're missing a couple
of them and we know that potentially a
few more of the lots
will be um will be up loaded or will be
um
developed not uploaded sorry have
something else will be developed
and so then we'll have um more out of
sequence so
originally we talked about renumbering
the lots
but we realized that that may not be the
best option because
also for example people know where lot 7
is or lot 4 or lat 10
and so instead of putting new numbers on
it
instead of throwing things off we didn't
want to throw more numbers into it
and so i think from a staff perspective
for the
the lots that don't have signage we'd
probably recommend just putting a
generic
p um but then there was question of
should the colors
uh be brought in to help still to help
still help direct traffic like we know
we want to go to the blue lot or the
green lot so
again i think eric covered most of that
question
but that was just some of the history of
discussion
and i i see that mike is trying to talk
but i think
he's still on mute i saw i'm waving
okay go ahead mike
still working on it i don't see you my
george did you have
something i noticed your hand was up
i was just going to i think mandy pretty
much covered it with
the history of the colors it's just
another way to assist people to locate
the parking closest to the
business that they might be going to
yeah do we have mike on
yet did you can you hear me now yes
okay one wonderful um
i would like to keep the numbers even if
they have to be rearranged when we have
somebody ask
where the store is located we tell them
by parking lot number 10.
and it's just a way as opposed to having
all the parking lots just mark p
if they're numbered then we can give our
customers a better idea where we're
located
did you hear that i did i heard that
claire mandy
i meant to put my hand down but actually
i agree with that and
i think that's what we with liz and eric
and i had talked about
is leave the ones that are numbered
leave them as is
and then um for the ones that don't have
signs
uh like the one um across the street
from visit las cruces
like the one on that that pizza slice i
think
eric called it just have those be a
number or
or a generic p for parking that's
universally kind of
um understood and not change the numbers
of the existing signs
but also not add more numbers to be
confused
later okay
i didn't get that part but how do people
feel about that
the rest of you on the i heard from mike
but
anybody else is everybody okay with that
am i the only one that mis
understood okay
thank you heather
anybody else
okay there's heather
okay cool um as far as funding
um liz would there be a possibility
and mandy using um the arts and cultural
district
since it's signage and it could
be something that
that could be explored that makes good
sense
liz
yes sorry i was trying to find them a
new button
that is definitely a potential because
these signs would be
in the arts and culture um and
you can bring it up with the with their
committee uh
it is the capital outlay as it's written
does
mention wayfinding signage and this
would qualify
okay all right very good good so i look
forward to hearing next month
whether they agree dr martinez
yes uh mayor bertim would this be an
opportunity to bring some art components
as the
signs are being reworked and and
now that the funding tied to arts and
cultural district
would that be something um that this
group would be interested on having
and tying it tying it in with the arts
or just for for pure signage
for zelda this is jennifer um we've
talked about it
in the past about this again
it would you know this would be up for a
committee conversation
but we had talked about this in the past
because we were trying to figure out a
way that this could also
are though the sign the
word signage and wayfinding signage can
be construed a couple different ways
depending on
who's reading the documents yeah um
but we were figuring this might be
something that we could do
some sort of welcome to downtown signage
as well
and maybe in that sense we look forward
to seeing where we could do something
like that and we could look forward to
maybe it being one large
project altogether and if even if we
could incorporate a little bit of
artwork within these signs that falls
within
our purview thank you
charge yes i would support
including art as part of the signage
project
sounds good
i agree we're all in the same wavelength
for sure mandy do you have something
else
no i'm sorry i didn't put my hand down
that's right
all right thank you you're welcome
um okay is that all on the signage
okay um let's see if i can read my
handwriting
um next on the agenda
is the parking garage
it's liz or
and we're gonna introduce thank you
sridevi she's gonna take over this item
thanks
thank you mandy uh this is shree with
public works
um i just wanted to recap on what
happened in our last meeting
which was in back in february the
painting presented as a conceptual plan
for the parking garage which include
retail spaces at level one
and all of these conceptual plans were
developed based on the workers study for
the downtown parking requirement
so since then since our last meeting we
have identified the lots for the parking
garage
and also added the scope to accommodate
the courthouse this was a request from
the city manager's office
and we have been working on feasible
options
and i think we have three good options
for all of you to review and comment
with that i'll let jose
take over and we also have mallory baker
from walker consultants uh she'll be
answering some of her questions please
thank you thank you
sure thank you baby
thank you uh aussie are you here
uh yes we are i'm
actually our camera is is our camp again
so
well there's three of us here so we're
going to go ahead and
introduce ourselves i'm processing i am
an architect
with you as always
hi jose this is john gerard um with
hewitz allers a project manager on the
project
and also with us is eugene
chung who's an intern who's been working
on some of the
options and just to give you a little
uh background on what we're at with the
parking structure
as shree had mentioned we
initially started wanted to look at
several sites
downtown but in order to better analyze
those sites
we contracted with walker
consultants and mallory baker was
involved in the project
to look at all the parking
areas and the parking demand
versus the parking supply and that
report i think you probably have all
seen
the committee based on that
data and that report we looked at about
three different sites downtown to
accommodate the uh the parking
structure and the one that best suited
uh the parking structure and gave us the
most
space to build the most
parking spaces was the lot
that is you see is this up on their
screen
yeah you can see my screen screen right
can you see this
the site plan that we have up yes sir
okay so that's the the site that
for the parking garage is uh the
southern part
the southern half of that site and then
on the northern
half of the site initially we hadn't
planned anything but subsequent to the
last meeting we were asked to look at a
courthouse design that would be built
adjacent to the parking structure this
is the post office here
yeah this is the last cruise of that
okay
and
with what we originally with our last
meeting with the committee
we had a four-story structure developed
that had about a little over 200 spaces
and in order to get closer to the
parking requirement of 400 spaces we
went with
a five-story or five-level parking
structure
which accommodates about 300 parking
spaces
structured spaces plus a retail space
of about 10 000 square feet
so that's and we can go to that
slide first
option so we've developed from that then
three various three different design
options
that incorporate on that site both the
parking structure
and the a potential courthouse
facility and some of the things you're
going to see that are common to all
three schemes is the parking structure
is in the same location we have a
pedestrian connection
that connects from church street
to maine and is also connects to the
parking structure
and the courthouse and so with that i'll
let
jose talk a little bit about the design
on each of those
of the options so i'll i'll walk you
through briefly
uh the three options that we looked at
two of the options well all options have
the parking structure on the southern
portion of the
of the site uh and in the middle that's
a plaza there is a continuation of this
pedestrian
uh element that was constructed a couple
of years ago i think
and spills into the plaza space you know
just creating this kind of civic
opportunity for the courthouse
and in one case there's only surface
parking
for the courthouse and in two cases and
two of the options
we have one level of underground parking
for the courthouse in two cases
the courthouse is two stories
as that will be our preference our
recommendation
and in one case the courthouse is only
one story building which was the
the preference of staff when we
interviewed them
last month so this is option one
and you can see that uh
in all cases the parking structure is
the same it has a
a level of retail that varies from
10 000 to 14 000 square feet depending
how it gets programmed
has a generous portal
facing church street with a colonnade
to allow pedestrians to be on that space
shelter from the street and shelter from
the elements a couple of things that
were important to us
uh at the time of design
was the location of the stairs
for the parking structure for two
reasons one
code wise it works really well for the
stairs to be
in opposite corners right in case of
emergency people can egress
easily but the other reason was that we
wanted
one set of stairs to address that corner
and engage the street and the other set
of stairs
to engage this pedestrian uh
structure out here so those two things
were important to maintain
so the first floor is mostly parking i'm
sorry it's mostly retail
and and it has a ram parking so you come
in here
this is the entrance i don't know if you
can see my my cursor
but you come up here and that's parking
on a ramp
uh ram parking and then
the floors above are 100 parking
on the other side
is the the courthouse
it's his own story
so as we move up uh to the second level
i'm sorry this is this is the street
level so this is what it will look like
at street level
uh parking for the courthouse surface
parking only
a two-story building here for the
courthouse
and the in the parking structure
on the south side of this site
this building here is
and heather can you mute um because
we're getting some feedback from you
so here's the the second floor so you
see the second floor
of the courthouse and the second floor
of the parking you see this is
uh ramp parking and that's flat parking
so the way it works is just one ramp one
single ram
with a very gentle slope with parking to
your right as you go up
and then once you get to this curve the
parking is
flat and then again you start ramping
again
and you repeat that four times
here's uh the floor plans for the court
house
i'm not sure we want to get into that in
this meeting but
if you do have questions we can come
back and look at them
yeah let me just say that the courthouse
was is our first pass out we have not
yet met with the courthouse committee
so these designs have not been finalized
but
we wanted to look at how the courthouse
might
fit on this site and so we had to start
looking at some of the spaces
and these are the floor plans for the
parking structure
so the second floor the
uh first floor right which is mostly
retail second floor third and fourth
floor will be identical
in the fifth floor on the rooftop will
have a little bit of extra parking
the total parking spaces
are 298 in this structure
and 31 surface parking
at the at the courthouse for a total of
the parking structure has a
larger capacity probably 304
but we're dedicating 12 of those spots
for accessible parking
which reduces our count significantly
depending if there's a comprehensive
parking master plan for downtown
we may alleviate some of those
accessible parkings
and maybe reach 300 or 302
spots in the structure and not have all
handicapped parking on the structure
itself
here's just a volume relationship
of the size of the parking structure
in relationship to a two-story
small courthouse so we have two options
there are two stories and one of them is
more compact
and the the other the second one that
i'll show you here in a minute
has uh
sort of some probations for future
growth and and
things that we've learned about
courthouse design
that we're incorporating
second one uh is the one story
courthouse so you see how much
square footage the courthouse will
consume
for this on this scheme
so for that reason we have a ramp
on this uh on this portion of the site
that goes down into the bottom of the
building
where we'll put about 50
cars or so 64 cars
underneath the parking structure yeah or
underneath the courthouse
and
the parking structure itself doesn't
change from the first one i
i described so
for the courthouse it's just a small
parking surface parking
for judges perhaps law enforcement
or something like that and access to
their
to their salary port and secure access
to
for prisoners and secure access for the
judge
here's a floor plan of that basement
so this sorry
this is the parking basement underneath
the
the one-story courthouse this dotted
line here
i'm not sure if you can see it that's
the footprint of the building above
and then there's space for about 64 cars
under the courthouse so
nothing on this side right because
the parking structure starts at street
level
there's a street level retail for the
retail or offices or services it doesn't
have to be retail we just
generically call it retail
that's the footprint of the courthouse
in one story
and um and you're just uh
floor plans for the court itself
and the floor plans for the parking
structure which
hasn't changed from the first scheme
this is what proportionally what a
one-story building will look like
next to the parking structure
on the third option this is a a
two-story courthouse
but it's slightly larger than the first
one you sell
so there's uh parking for
for about 25 cars on the surface
for staff judges
and law enforcement that's currently
that's what they need
25 cars but there's a ramp access here
for a parking
garage underneath the courthouse again
and that's a floor plan of it
so you can fit about 64 cars here
and these are the totals for this one so
298 cars
on the parking structure 25 cars
surface parking and 64 cars
on the basement
and in this scheme that's you know
roughly what a two-story
larger courthouse will look like in
relationship
to the parking garage now
uh early we had looked
at a couple of uh just started to think
about the architecture of the
of the parking garage itself
and this is a facade to scale
of a five of a five level parking so
what you see there before
this will be the stair tower
that takes you to the uh
to the to the corner street
i'm sorry i missed this here okay so
uh that's that's the magnitude
i mean the architecture we can we can
work on it i mean there's 100
different ways to do the same structure
but
generally the size of the parking
structure on five levels is something
like this
so just to give you an idea of the
magnitude of the of the
project right all this bottom side here
is
retail or services
for levels of garage and a rooftop
with perhaps a covered area with solar
panels or at least
to protect the vehicles this is the
stair tower
at the at the corner
this is another facade again trying to
emphasize
engagement of the
parking garage and in the pedestrian
level
parking structures tend to separate
people from the street
and i i presume that's not what you want
to achieve
you know once you take the cars and you
elevate them you take them out of the
street
you you lose that engagement so it's
important that the
parking structure itself has
an inviting component so i feel as part
of the street when i park on the on the
structure
this is an aerial view uh
you know again the architecture we can
we can
think about it in many different ways
but
this was this this was done a little bit
earlier before we had the
the fifth level so this one is four
levels
but you can see the magnitudes of the of
the
of the structure it takes the entire
site
and part of the reason why we chose this
site over the one north of it
is because the one of the north has a
little chamfered area
the alley is not straight and it kind of
takes
about eight feet in the corner which
doesn't work
well for cars the building you can
accommodate
you can make space for it
but in the parking structure the
dimensions are a lot more rigid than
a courthouse and this jose this site
also has better access with that
with the drive the street running
through versus
the pedestrian one over there correct
so um here's kind of an idea of what
that corner would look like
right uh people will engage the this
this
stair tower with elevator to
go into you know each level
the retail will wrap around the street
to give you the impression that the
parking is not
kind of overpowering the street and we
only have a 30 foot opening here
for cars going in and out so the
entrance is
very discreet and maintains the
kind of the ability of the sidewalk to
remain a pedestrian primarily used
um here's some thoughts on what that you
know portal area look like
uh you know just a cover protected space
for
for folks to to do business
and this site back here will be the side
okay and you know again architecturally
this can take
many shapes this is a more sober
design with some you know
maybe aluminum louvers that protect the
cars but also
give some sort of gentleness to the to
the project
the structure very likely will make a
lot of sense if it's concrete
so if you imagine you know those you
know
400 feet of concrete 30 foot tall
it is pretty overpowering so if we can
bring some lightness to the structure i
think will be
beneficial to the street um
and then we're thinking about ways that
we can break
the length of the of the building so it
doesn't
doesn't feel that long so perhaps
there's an opportunity for uh for a
gigantic billboard there to announce
uh downtown events or whatnot uh
or to uh sell that
uh that uh
advertising space to uh to sell it
and maintain kind of that engagement and
likelihood of the of the structure
and here's a view looking towards your
your city hall
on the corner of church street and
again that's the entrance to the parking
back here
retail that wraps around and the third
tower that
engages the street as well as providing
access to
each one of the levels again this
this sketch that you see here is for a
four level
garage so uh the one that we have in the
drone is
it it's 11 feet taller than this and
not a whole lot taller but you know just
imagine a little bit taller than that
and uh that's that's all we have
um for you to
uh to ask questions and discuss
thanks jose as we said you know the
courthouse is still
in design and and we have to meet with
that committee to discuss more of what
you know their needs are and and the
what the design of that courthouse is
going to look like but
for the parking structure i think you
know this is
is pretty close to the final design and
if you have questions regarding that
you know would be glad to to answer them
thank you jose and others for your work
any questions
george and then i have heather hold on
so i had to wrote down three little
things here
in the courthouse design you showed an
essentially an underground or lower
level parking area but you didn't talk
about that for the main
parking structure is there a fundamental
reason for that or would that be
something that could be considered
well primarily the the
the purpose of that is to add additional
parking
and when we met with the courthouse
staff and committee
they need about 60 to 70 spaces
now whether that's in that parking
structure
underground or in the parking garage
you know we can accommodate it the thing
with the underground parking is
it is more expensive um probably two to
three times more
than above ground so it's something we
just need to look at as we get into the
design of the courthouse as far as how
much parking they really need
and the cost of it and you know
the designs right now do not address
the structure of the building and how
that's going to impact the parking
garage so there's
you know there's some things that we
would still have to work out that
could affect the number of spaces but um
the reason is basically to get more
parking and get closer to the 400
that because you were talking about
doing five stories so instead of five
above four above and one below would be
just my
no it would always be five above
there's always five but then the
question is whether we put one
level below the courthouse or not
i i think to your question uh you were
asking
why are we not considering an
underground parking for the
garage correct
right you would still have five levels
but one of those would be underground
we we could uh in like john mentioned
it's just a matter of cost
right so that's which and my next uh
comment is you have the elevation
showing this direction
but i would be interested in seeing the
elevations
where you might be on
on water or main street
and see how that building will impact
the view of the oregon mountain
because the oregon mountain is one of
our great treasures here in las cruces
so if we build something that's too high
and too impactful on that vista
i don't think you'll get good public
support for that
and which also before at our last
meetings we were
getting ready for public input and we
weren't able to have that
so how are we going to handle public
input for this
and that's why i would like to see those
elevations
available for public input to see how
the public responds
to what this would look
like up against the oregon mountains
that's something we'll have to for the
next meeting
is look at a section through that block
and
from main street to see what that does
to the views
and if that's a critical concern you
know
we may have to look at a lower level
underground level
it is they are a lot very expensive to
do
and um they're not as efficient as the
above ground but if that's a major
concern
that'd be one way to accommodate that
george did you ask your third or speak
to the third point
yeah the public meeting was the third
third
oh gotcha okay mandy anybody
want to answer that question
so on public meetings once we you know
get inputs from all of you and
we might have to have more a couple of
meetings with courthouse
and after we finalize or not finalize at
least when we have a good conceptual
design we'll reach out to public to get
their inputs
do you have a time frame um
maybe a month or so we will use next 30
days on developing more designs on this
and then we'll reach out to public
so what way would you reach out to the
public i think
we're asking the way we've done
on the other project is we'll have a
virtual recorded
videos played it'll be advertised in
youtube and cities facebook
and it'll be open for comments okay
thank you thank you
um um heather
hold on heather i'm so you're on mute
still mute
there you go um
is i'm concerned about the facade of
this parking
structure is that the final design
and i i think the design of the um the
side of the parking structure
needs to have a a great relationship
with the design of the courthouse
i'm also concerned that if this is
what the intent is or this is
the look that is being designed it
certainly
does not um have much relationship
to the adobe structures that are or look
like adobe structures
some of them are well aware of that but
it seems to dwarf
what we have on um las cruces avenue and
main street
of course it's going to dwarf it because
it's a five it's a five-floor parking
structure
um and it i understand i'm not against
parking structures we discussed this
ten years ago um the parking structure
that was designed
ten years ago had very i was very very
different than this
um so i'm
trying to get my arms around
the facade
um are we on
this these are very preliminary
conceptual plans
there's no uh i
i think the only thing we know for sure
are the
horizontal dimensions we know that is
278 feet long
and 140 feet wide and about this much
tall that's that's about all we know
at this point very likely will be
constructed
out of concrete precast
that's what we know but the facade
treatment can be can be
just about anything now in my opinion
this is just my opinion i think that
when we do a new building a new urban
intervention
in a town it deserves to look
to the future it it it's a
it's an act of optimism to do
architecture
and i think you know having something
that is contemporary
engaging exciting uh
gets you more mileage with the
several younger generations than us that
are going to be using the structure for
for the future
so in my opinion i think that we always
should be looking forward
when designing but of course the
architecture can look like
like whatever we want to uh you know
there's a there's a
structure there next to it that has
these arches and beams you know it could
look like that
but i'm not sure that that the the
young population of las cruces
is looking forward to that maybe maybe
there's
maybe bringing a little bit of
excitement to downtown
is deserving but that's that's just my
personal opinion but
of course we're very skillful designers
and we can work with
uh with anything i've just had one more
comment
um i'm certainly not opposed to the
modern design and i
agree with you that we need some
excitement and we don't need
to be designing something that looks
like the amateur hotel
but um i also was very involved with the
federal courthouse
and judge brack and the different things
that happened there
i was very involved with the um
american southwest theater company the
new building on the campus
and so i you know as a member of this
committee i'd like to say that
i certainly am not opposed to new
innovative
um exciting design but i do think we
we um we need to look carefully at it
the federal courthouse to our amazement
um is quite beloved people are actually
um
i've heard very few negative comments
on the other hand um my beloved
um theater which i've been involved with
that university theater for 30 40 years
um people just vilify it
um you know there's got to be a happy
medium and that's all i'm going to say
yeah i appreciate that
thank you heather i appreciate the
remarks i i did want to say
that a person said oh this is exciting
and then i thought oh it's like it's
very
large and sort of takes over the end
the entire you don't see
anything else and so i agree looking at
different facades but um from the others
the other directions in terms of the
view of the mountains and
those kinds of things are are are really
important
um and maybe it's the color that's
throwing this off a little bit
as well um and and
but um i agree that we want it fresh and
exciting
and sort of looking to the future
um but it it looks a bit
odd um given next to those adobe
structures and the colors so
i i would agree with that um and so
so looking at that would um
would be helpful um so
anyhow uh mallory baker did you
you had something to say i did yeah
thank you i had my hand raised um thanks
so much
um we we worked well i'm with walker
consultants we worked with
jose and john's team primarily focused
on the supply and demand and
analysis at the parking system and also
um we've provided some management and
operational recommendations and some
functional design support on the
structure
um i wanted to just quickly encourage
the committee to think about the
structure
in in the broader context of the parking
system
um as a urban planner and a
transportation planner i'm most
interested in the way that this parking
structure will help the overall health
of the system and i think what we found
when we did the supply and demand
analysis is that you have these
um these demand crunches along main
street on
in the on street and along those those
lots those public lots along main street
and
of course the parking structure adding
supply to the system the attempt there
is to mitigate some of those demand
crunches which are probably leading to
members of the general public and
perhaps members of this committee
feeling like the parking system isn't
sufficient to meet demand
and i just wanted to cautio bring a
little bit of a cautionary tale an
optimistic
cautionary tale in that when you add
supply to the system especially
in the form of a structure it doesn't
always
solve that problem because behaviorally
people
tend to try to find parking on street
then go to the lots and then they
circulate circulate circulate before
going to a structure because
for some reason even if you have this
incredibly inviting structure
um it still tends to be a little bit of
a a leap for a lot of folks especially
older folks or folks who are less
comfortable with driving
maybe slightly visually impaired etc to
enter a structure
so i would encourage you know coupling
this structure with
maybe a bit of a management enforcement
strategy
as outlined in our report and i know the
city has been
thinking about enforcing time limits for
example
already and also thinking about who are
the users that we really want to
encourage to use the structure are they
maybe employees primarily
are they the retail customers who do we
want in this structure and how do we
manage access to the structure and
marketing of this structure to make sure
that it's utilized well
and that the city is getting um you know
the bang for its buck you know getting a
lot out of this investment so
you know parking structures are really
expensive to build which i'm sure
you know very very well and so i just
wanted to bring up
you know kind of that broader um
bird's-eye view context of the system
as it relates to the structure into the
conversation so thanks again for having
me
and i appreciate you letting me jump in
there
absolutely thank you mallory um yes
mr white yeah i have a couple of
questions
uh number one how many surface
spaces are we going to lose to build
this garage and to build the courthouse
from the existing inventory the other
question is
might it make more sense to have the
entrance
on church street uh for traffic coming
in
from the uh from the north because if
there's any backup
of people trying to enter the parking
lot the parking garage the way you have
it
there's only enough backup for about
four cars
those are my two questions
thank
i think the as far as the existing
surface lot is about 100 cars on
each one so there's about 200 there
that um you would lose
i mean you wouldn't lose but that's
that's what you have currently
so could be a net gain of a hundred uh
parking spaces no net gain of uh
about 200 and this
then depending on what we do at the
courthouse could be another
close to 100. okay
um will there be consideration because
currently
we've been tossing the ideas as you know
around
motorcycles bicycle
parking um
it is there consideration to have
um something like that incorporated into
this structure
um yes we were thinking that
there's some opportunities
on this side
so on this space here from the plaza you
will be able to access
an area here that could be
we label it like a storage mechanical
electrical or official parking
bicycle parking retail just about
anything so there's some great
opportunities
of the lower level facing north
for a number of things and i definitely
uh bicycle parking would be one okay
let me ask answer the other question
that mr white
brought up about the entrance to the
parking structure
and the reason we put it
um where it is
is that gives you both access from east
west
and north south so coming out of the
parking structure
you can you can go either of those
directions whereas if it's
just on church you only have east west
or north south rather south
it's close to five so i know that we're
trying to
um as soon as we
as soon as five but my last question is
last time we spoke um in regards to
supply and demand mallory thank you for
bringing that up
we still currently and probably for the
next
couple or so years we'll have enough
parking to accommodate
the load the people coming in and out of
the downtown
is that still accurate and how far
out are we to a kind of parking
structure that you're speaking on
um yeah the the
you have a surplus of parking but really
the parking structure
is not necessarily to add that much more
parking
i mean we we'd say it's about 200 more
but it's to free up
all those other parking lots for other
types of development
so once this is built those lots then
could be
leased or sold for developing of housing
or
you know other uses in the downtown
okay so um all right i
i understand that
any other question mallory
did you have i'm i'm sorry i also forgot
to put my hand down
sorry about that you're right anybody
else have anything further
um sometime liz should we um
you um how do you want to handle the
last item and that last item is
on parking enforcement
i'd like to make it just a quick comment
before you oh sorry jose
uh that's okay um uh we will
explore uh in case it wasn't clear we
will explore
architectural options that better meet
uh you know
your desires and and for mr white
we will you know once once we're more
solid on what happening at the
courthouse side
we will explore a different access once
we
discuss it with our traffic engineers
and we'll
you know we'll throw that out there and
see if it's a better option
so you know rest assured that we'll look
at those options as well
thank you
i just want to let you know that the um
parking enforcement is actually
for a future discussion so we'll be
talking oh i'm sorry
i'm not paying attention okay thank you
very good
um any other last comments
before we adjourn hey can i get a motion
to adjourn please
thank you um all in favor signify by
saying aye
okay okay see you next time
thank you have a good evening