Loading...
5.3. SR 09-18-2006 Item Description Street Disruption Permit for Jackson Street and Main Street Item Number 5.3. Prepared by Scott Clark, Community Development Director Reviewed by City of Elk River REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Agenda Section Meeting Date Administration September 18, 2006 Introduction Staff is coordinating several "downtown issues" under this item which includes the following: 1) Request by Flannery Construction and CSS Builders to close a portion of Main Street from Oct.2 to October 23, 2006 (3 weeks) for utility work (See attached letter dated September 12, 2006.). 2) Request by Flannery Construction to reconfigure traffic on Jackson Street from October 30 until November 27,2006 (20 working days) in order for a crane to be sited properly to complete the framing work of the Jackson Square project (See attached letter dated September 12,2006.). 3) Discussion and direction by the City Council on a proposal to have ten parking stalls leased to the City for downtown parking needs. These stalls are located on the First National Bank's lower parking lot. A comprehensive map for all of these activities is attached. Staff also communicated these issues at the River's Edge Downtown Business Association Meeting on September 13, 2006. Discussion 1) As discussed at previous Council meetings Flannery Construction and CSS Builders have worked together to coordinate their independent utility work in order to minimize disruption time to Main Street. Per the attached letter, dated September 12, 2006, from the two companies, special efforts are being made to also minimize the time parking will be lost for the businesses along Main Street. The construction limits of the utility work will keep Main Street (from the easterly edge of the Cinema building to Parrish Ave closed for the subject time. Work being done in front of the stores will eliminate parking for a total of 8 of the total 22 days, albeit that 4 stalls will remain permanendy open and available as shown on the attached illustration. This illustration also shows how the City's park project interfaces with Main Street and the aforementioned parking. 2) As stated in past Council information memos, Flannery Construction needs to use Jackson Avenue for their crane set-up. They have worked with the Bank of Elk River to minimize the time (20 working days) that is needed for crane work from J ackson Avenue. In turn, they will then complete the work by using the Bank site for one additional week to complete their framing operation. As shown on the attached map, the crane set-up is outside of the existing fence line which, in order to S:\Community Development\Scott Clark\2006 CC memos\09 05 06 Street Distruption.doc accommodate one-way traffic southbound, will necessitate a number of the J ackson Avenue parking stalls to be removed, but 5 stalls can remain throughout the proposed timeline. 3) Lany T oth, HRA Commissioner, unilaterally negotiated a deal with Houlton Investment Company to lease, on a month to month basis, ten parking stalls as illustrated on the attached map. The lease rate would be $500.00 per month. Mr. Toth was of the opinion that these stalls should be provided for employees that would use the stalls for the majority of the day. The leasing of these aforementioned parking stalls needs to be analyzed as part of a larger picture, that being whether modifications can be made in the existing King Ave parking lot to satisfy both employee and customer parking needs. The status of the sufficiency of parking has been an on-going discussion between the business owners and the City for a long time (at this time in the King Avenue parking lot there are 77 employee stalls, 29 public and 5 residential for a total of 111 stalls). There is no question that many times in the late morning and early afternoon employee parking is full. Infrequently, customer parking is full but customers do have other options, e.g. street parking. It is also important to note that some of the City parking north of Highway 10 is not available since it is being used as a staging area and for construction worker parking. Any changes in the King Ave parking lot (e.g. granting more employee parking) or leasing spaces outside should be viewed as a temporary solution as the true impact on downtown parking will not be known for another one to two years when the commercial spaces are fully leased in the new proJects. The employee parking situation has evolved with a number of past decisions affecting the same. Originally, First National received 23 designated stalls as part of an agreement that allowed the City to use a portion of their property in configuring the King Ave. parking lot. Over time, they are now receiving 48 active permits. Other major users include the Bank of Elk River (36 active) and Kemper Drug (35). In addition, there are 180 other permits, for a total of 299 that have been issued with Police Chief Beahen reporting that a majority of these permits are actively used. The fact remains that a large number of employee permits exist when compared to the 77 existing stalls. With the ratio of existing parking permits to stalls, full occupancy will occur and, effectively, a permit grants the ability to park in an employee stall but does not guarantee availability. Another consideration is that the King Ave. lot is unique in the fact that this is an employee lot and not a customer lot (employee to customer stalls are almost 3 to 1) and customers who park in this area without a permit are tagged and fined. As the downtown grows and revitalizes it seems that businesses will need to look at parking that is less convenient for the employee and allow customers to grow in terms of the number of stalls. Staff views that there are a number of options that may assist (but not cure) the current King Avenue parking lot situation, options include: 1) See if First National Bank could park more employees in their lower lot, and Bank of Elk River to park more employees in their lot across Highway 10 2) Use of other outside parking areas such as the Chamber of Commerce site 3) Increasing fines for illegal parking in a municipal lot (currently $20) S:\Community Development\Scott Cbuk\2006 cc memos\09 05 06 Street Distruption.doc 4) Revamping the permit process, e.g. paying for permits, annual renewals, capping the number of permits all with the purpose of reducing the number of outstanding permits to better match the number of actual stalls available. Financial Impact None at this time Attachments . Memo from CSS Builders, Inc. and Flannery Construction to the City of Elk River dated September 12, 2006 re: Main Street Closure . Memo from Flannery Construction to the City of Elk River dated September 12, 2006 re: Jackson Street reconfiguration . Memo from Jeff Beahen dated September 1, 2006 illustrating King Avenue parking lot daily use patterns. . Street Disruption map dated September 14, 2006 . Public Parking map dated September 14, 2006 Action Requested Staff recommends approval of: 1) Issuance of a Street Disruption Permit for the closure of Main Street from October 2nd to October 23, 2006 per the conditions outlined in the CSS Builders and Flannery Construction, Inc. memo dated September 12, 2006 and as illustrated on the Street Disruption map dated September 14, 2006. 2) Issuance of a Street Disruption Permit for the reconfiguration of Jackson Street from October 30 to November 27, 2006 per the conditions outline in the memo, dated September 12, 2006, from Flannery Construction to the City of Elk River, and as illustrated on the Street Disruption map dated September 14, 2006. 3) Within 45 days, staff to present to the City Council a report on alternative recommendations for employee parking issues. Follow Up S:\Community Development\Scott Clark\2006 cc memos\09 05 06 Street Distruption.doc MEMORANDUM From: CSS Builders, Inc. Flannery Construction, Inc. To: Cathy Mehelich City of Elk River Date: Tuesday, September 12,2006 Dear Cathy, Weare glad to report that we have successfully worked together to create a plan for closure of Main Street for utility installations at the Bluff and Jackson Place projects. As discussed in our Wednesday, August 31 meeting with city staff, the work will include removal of concrete traffic barriers and fencing on both sides of the street, followed by six major excavations to complete three water disconnects, three sewer disconnects, two water connections, two sanitary sewer connections and a storm sewer connection. Completion of the utility work will be followed by restoration of the affected curbs, pavement, and striping and re-installation of traffic barriers and fences. We propose to complete all this work within a schedule of 16 working days, from Monday October 2nd through Monday October 23rd. The utility contractor has agreed to field two crews, and this schedule includes as much simultaneous work as possible given the physical constraints of the work area. This schedule also leaves the possibility of weekend work to compensate for weather or other uncontrollable events. In our meeting last Wednesday you expressed concern regarding loss of parking spaces for the Main Street businesses east of Jackson Avenue. To address this concern, we propose that the street disruption occur in two stages. The primary closure would be from the Flannery Construction office at 649 Main Street, east to Parrish Avenue, from Monday October 2nd through Monday October 23rd. Within the timeframe of the primary closure, a secondary closure would extend west to the Cinema Office Building for five working days to allow completion of utilities for the Jackson Place building. At the end of the project, this same area would be occupied intermittently to allow crews to restore the street sub grade, pavement and striping. Finally, the current agreement between CSS and Vanman provides that the Bluff Block boundaries would expand on December 1st back to their pre-August 11th boundaries. CSS will make a final determination on this point by the end of October, but appears it may be possible to operate within current boundaries for the remainder of the project. This would allow the parallel parking on the north side of Main Street to be opened as soon as Vanman is finished working in that area. Thank you for working with us as we developed this plan. Sincerely, />>/..... >>>>) L~'/ -.--J ~ L Paul Lyver, CSS Buil ~~~- Kenneth Allen, Flannery Construction Street Closure Memo 2006-09-11.doc ,,(::.;":~ '::" 'r "'.':'''' MEMORANDUM From: FI~ery!~pnstruction, Inc. To: Cathy Mehelich City of Elk River ".~ Date: Tuesday~'{~eptember 12, 2006 Dear Cathy, I am writing.inr~~ds to the proposed re-routing of traffic on Jackson Avenue to allow erection of precast concrete for the Jackson Place building, and to address construction limits, schedule and staging issues. .. Construction Li1l!!~: Please :find attached a sketch of the proposed temporary change in the consttuction limits: Along Jackson Avenue, you'll notice that the southerly two-thirds of the construction fen~'~oul~move west to provide operating space for the crane, plus the required safety margin between the cran~'and the foundation wall. The northern third of the Jackson Avenue fence would remain 1J19ha.pg~ as would the fence on the south, east and north sides. This design preserves one-way, southboUnd tX8.:ffic on Jackson Avenue. It also preserves one handicapped parking space and three regular spaces. '(P~ase note that background drawing I used to make this sketch does not show the location ofth;eangl,.e4,parking spaces accurately. Though it appears that a total of :five spaces >,,,,,.,","(l''\l.' would be preserved, in reahty it would be four.) Schedule~ The duration of the re-route would be 20 working days. This includes one day to move the fence, 1 5 "day~Jor precast erection, three days for masonry and one day to move the fence back to its,on,ginallocat1Qn. Our target date for commencement is October 30. We will update that schedule in tile next weelc iUld hope to be able to set a finn date at our September 27 meeting with city staff .. ,.,1 ,.'\'f.~;,~:;'~' Staging:froqlT~f~tbound Main Street, trucks would enter the site at the southeast gate and wait withinthe;<:~ns~,?,&:n limits. A few trucks would be unloaded from this location. The majority, however, would l>tlll~~~}Urrough the southwest gate onto Main Street, then back up into the construction .area .QIlJa9'kson, adjacent to the crane. When empty, they would leave downtown via i, '"\i',',,,!,O;, ,1' :, ':;"":~"<'" westbound Main S~~")~d Proctor Avenue. We will provide flaggers to control traffic during these operatipns. . , ''''.i;' Thank YQU for''Ygtking with us as we developed this plan. SinCerely, Precast Crane Memo 2006-09-1] .doc Sep 14 06 08:18a - Flanner~ Construction:Jac 7632410294 p.3 , , , , , / , , I , / I =a- \ N-J\\N ~1R..E:.t.T fENtt UI'H.t\ANGffi J~ L V5DNPLA C. E (ON,lR~\c..T\ON U~\TS FOR ERIC\\ON Qf- PREtA~ T CONcRETE. . .' .- ~ - .~.7r':'-.J~ :B: 6JL\ ,., r-I LU JACIlSON ..c;1TE Page 1 of2 Mehelich, Catherine From: Beahen, Jeff Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 3:10 PM To: Mehelich, Catherine; Clark, Scott; Maurer, Terry Home Cc: Johnson, Lori Subject: Parking I went downtown and accounted for the cars that were parking in the downtown area. The count was done at 1 :45 pm today. The King Avenue lot had 1-open employee parking spot left. 6-cars were found that were not displaying the employee parking permit and they were tagged. There were 2-open public parking spots and 2-open handi-cap parking spots in the King Avenue lot. On Jackson, there were no open spots except the handi-cap spot by Kemper. There were 6-open spots in front of McCoy's and 5-open spots east of the meat market or Mikols on Main Street. This leaves a total of 13 available public parking spots absent handi-cap parking and only 1-employee space available. The count for employee parking was as follows: Kemper Drug 10 Elk River Travel 3 Old Main Eatery 1 American National Bank 3 Oakwood Insurance 3 Bumper to Bumper 2 Diamond City Bread 2 Avalon 3 KLH Drafting 1 Virgo Inc 1 Linden Construction 1 Dynamics Design 1 Bromen Systems 1 Chase Tkg 1 Farmers Union Ins 1 Elk River Chiro 1 Bank of Elk River 14 Elk River Meats 1 McCoys 1 GPX 1 Kalvestran Inc 1 Scrap Bags 1 First National Finance 16 9/13/2006 Page 2 of2 . Total- 70 permitted employee parking 6-unauthorized parkers l-open spot Available public parking - 13 Permits currently number 402 issued, although many of the issued permits have not been recorded yet-most likely not handed out by the business yet. We have 304 recorded permits that match to an employee/license number. I left the downtown area, checked First National's lower lot - there were 24 open spots in that lot. The Bank of Elk River North Highway 10 lot had 1 open handi-cap spot, and 11-other open parking spots. INTERESTING NOTE: At 2:25pm, there were 4-spots open on Jackson, none in the King lot for public parking, 3-less by McCoy's and the same number on Main Street. (12-available public spots) There were however now 11-open employee parking spots available. (10 more than 40 minutes earlier) Permit Examples: Kemper Drug has 35 valid permits. Bank of Elk River has 36 valid permits. First National has 48 valid permits. Those are the biggest permit holders. Hope this helps-did it at a non-lunch time to get a better count of "business" parking, , , , , , Jeffrey A. Beahen Chief of Police Elk River Police Department 13077 Orono Parkway Elk River, MN 55330 763-635-1201 jbeahen@police.ci.elk-river.mn.us 9/13/2006 91Jd 060l OPIJ\f Hffint 'W\f St-:t-t:tl 900zlvl/6 '6Mp'6uPIJed J!lqnd\s6uIMeJa\UO!leZ!ll1.l!~'ij UMOlUMOO\:S 1 133HS ~ o ...:l 8~ ::r:o<:l ~~ .....0 d::r: ~ 25~ 25 ~~ ~ <r:r-. ~o r-....:l ~ ~~ 8 ~~ ~ Z<r: g5 Od ~ ~~ 3l'v'8S 01 10N :3lVOS .l~AnI ~ 13: JO ,(,IJ l~8 :;.e NMVHO 900l/v ~/6 :31VO DNI)filVd JIIHfld :r d~ l$~ t:J.."'{' 0 "'{' ~t; fft ot ~ - "'{' tJ~ ~ G 91Jd 060l oPYV HOJIlI 'wv 6O:SI:ll 900lM/6 '6Mp'900llle~ JljjeJ.L\56u!M"'a\UO!lezlll?ll^,,~ UMOluMO(J\:S 133HS lViJ :A8 NM~a 900Z/v~/6 :31Va .I~Al)I ~ IH JO AID 3TvJS 01 10N :31VOS z NOI~dflllSIa ~tltllI~S ,'" ,'" ". )Jtrv cl SNO 1Al aOaa S'-T JtVO:) QaI\I~ ""-... f- (j) 3: z f- a z u w 2 w > a 2 0 W D-- Parking Clarification Page 1 of2 From: Clark, Scott Sent: Monday, September 18,200610:50 AM To: Huebner, Debbie Subject: FW: Parking Clarification c c \\0~,~} Gl \>(7.10' / \ \ \ '6 Q Ue~ S,3 Huebner, Debbie From: Pat Dwyer [mailto:pdwyer@thebankofelkriver.com] Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 10:00 AM To: Mehelich, Catherine; Johnson, Lori; Beahen, Jeff; Clark, Scott Cc: Cindy Barney Subject: Parking Clarification I just want to clarify something with regard to the parking information contained in tonight's council packet. In the packet information it is inferred that the bank is not using 11 parking spots in our "Boelter" lot north of Hwy 1 0 ~nd we have those 11 employees parking in the city employee lot. This is not true. We have 71 employees downtown; 35 parking in the "Boelter" lot and 36 with parking permits for the city lot. The bank does not have any employees with assigned parking spots in our "Boelter" parking lot who also have permits for the city lot. In other words, every space in the "Boelter" lot is assigned to and is being used by a bank employee and none of them have permits for the city lot. Just a reminder that the bank spent in excess of $300,000 to provide the 35 employee parking spaces at the "Boelter" lot and we take the downtown parking situation seriously. Also, the bank's lunch hour runs from 11 :00 am to 2:00 pm, so a car count in the "Boelter" lot at 1 :45 pm still includes employees at lunch. In addition, as with any business, at any given time a number of employees are on vacation, out on customer calls, etc. Such was the case when the car count was done. I will be at tonight's council meeting, but I would like this information relayed to the people on your emaillist so they have the facts if they aren't at the meeting. I have contacted Phil Halls a couple of times about the condition of the street, sidewalk and curb at the southeast corner of Hwy 10 and Jackson. The walking surfaces have continued to move and settle since the shoring was installed, leaving heaves and gaps that are becoming dangerous for those using that crossing. Something needs to be done to level this as it will become more dangerous in the winter when these uneven surfaces become covered with ice. Please call me at 241-8528 if you have any questions. See you at 6:30. PHD Patrick Dwyer pdwyer@TheBankofElkRiver.com (763) 241-8528 9/18/2006