Can’t find parking in Winter Park? The city commission’s moving forward with a plan that could help you out by building a parking garage at City Hall.
On May 13, commissioners directed staff to “issue a solicitation for development teams” that want to help execute this plan, Craig O’Neil, Winter Park’s assistant director of communications, said in an email.
The solicitation is part of a two-phase procurement process to establish a public-private partnership that would construct the garage, according to a staff report from the May 13 city commission meeting. The process is in its first phase, called a “request for qualifications.”
(NICK GEORGOUDIOU)
According to the RFQ’s scope, the construction project should create at least 145 parking spaces for City Hall employees and operations and 120 spaces for public parking. The document also states that the parking garage will use the already existing parking lots at City Hall at 401 S. Park Ave.
During the RFQ, developers don’t have to propose “detailed design” yet for their plans, but they should submit outlines that “provide a high-level conceptual overview of their proposed parking strategy and overall project approach,” according to the scope.
Once the first phase of the parking garage plan is complete, the second phase, called a request for proposals, will ask for detailed plans from shortlisted developers that respond to the RFQ, the scope also states.
In his email, O’Neil said the city doesn’t have a timeline yet for when the request for proposals or the start of the garage’s construction will begin.
At the May 13 city commission meeting, Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio said the city is moving forward with the plan “because parking’s been a problem for years and years.”
“It’s going to cost a fortune to build a garage, and the city just doesn’t have the money to do that now,” she added. “So we decided we might explore this public-private partnership.”
As defined by the International Monetary Fund, such partnerships involve both the public and private sectors to execute projects. The city hasn’t yet decided how it or the yet-to-be-chosen development team will be involved specifically in the public-private partnership, O’Neil said in his email.
“All details will be discussed at the negotiation stage of the process,” he added.
O’Neil also said responses to the RFQ solicitation are due by 2 p.m. on July 15, and a committee that will shortlist respondents for the request-for-proposals phase will meet Aug. 4.