Kent City Council changes downtown bridge parking, talks new police building and student housing

Kent City Council met Wednesday, Oct. 1 and passed a motion to change parking on the West Main Street bridge.

The council also discussed the implementation of the new smart parking meter system, an update on the new police building and a possible opportunity for new student housing.

Ward 1 Councilman Garret Ferarra’s motion to incorporate parallel parking on the bridge and explore paid meter parking as a future option passed after Ward 5 Councilwoman Heidi Shaffer’s motion to keep the parking as is failed.

The council debated multiple options for bridge parking including no parking at all, diagonal parking only, parking on both sides and paid meter parking.

City Engineer James Bowling said the parking area is utilized about 44 to 50 percent of the time during peak hours of 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., which means eight of the 16 spots are used at any time between those hours, even after the PARTA parking deck opened.

Ward 6 Councilwoman Tracy Wallach and Ward 3 Councilman Wayne Wilson voiced concerns about parking on the bridge ranging from aesthetic issues to environmental concerns.

“We have a beautiful bridge there, a historic bridge, and it looks ugly with cars on top of it,” Wilson said. “And the idea that there may be oil, gas, antifreeze or brake fluid going directly into the river right away, that bothers me.”

The council also passed a motion to initially keep the new smart parking meters operational Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with room for alterations based on data acquired by the meters about utilization patterns. The motion also approved a rate of $1 per hour for a maximum of two hours, although visitors can pay by minutes needed with coins and a $1 minimum with a debit or credit card.

The council also heard a presentation from Jeffrey Meyers of Dave Sommers & Associates, the architectural firm hired to design the new police building.

Meyers said he and his team are just nearing the end of their schematic design phase in which they analyze multiple landscape factors such as land grade, surrounding building heights, noise levels and pedestrian accessibility paths that lead them to a “resultant” first schematic floor plan. The next phase is design development, which will last about two to three months, Meyers said.

The co-owners of NewBrook Partners, a real estate development company based in Cleveland that is part of the development team building the new institutional advancement building, also spoke to the Council about their interest in purchasing the City Council building property on the corner of Summit and Depeyster Street for a new student housing facility.

City Manager Dave Ruller asked the partners to speak to the council for further discussion and questions after hearing NewBrook Partners’ proposal and feeling like it matched the city’s goals.

“We’ve been advocating and looking for smart student housing in close proximity to downtown, and their proposal fits very much with  our liveable, walkable, sustainable community concept, which is really much of what the downton is rooted in,” Ruller said.”There’s nothing that does that better than having people living closer to downtown, and we’ve made significant investments in the downtown, and I want to make sure those succeed…so all of that gave us a reason to be interested in legitimate proposals like this.”

Guy Totino, co-owner of NewBrook Partners, said the City Council building site would fit roughly an 80 to 90-unit, four-story building that would hold about 150 to 200 beds.

The council raised concerns and suggestions about mixed student and adult housing, parking and possible future reduction in enrollment that might reduce the amount of student housing needed.

Ruller said he felt NewBrook Partners’ proposal might be right for Kent because it fits Kent’s need for smaller-unit housing projects while Kent State and the city formally analyze the need for housing.

A motion to allow the administration to continue to move forward and explore the sale of the property passed.

The council canceled its session to discuss eminent domain of four parcels of land for the new police building because there was a mistake on the legislation that needs to be fixed before it can be signed into law.