It will take a little of the old and a little of the new to ease the parking crunch in downtown Birmingham.
The city is creating or refurbishing more than 1,000 parking spaces in two garages (new and old) this year. About $550,000 will go into finishing work on the Park Street Parking Structure this summer while work could begin on the new underground parking garage in Shain Park late this year.
The improvements to the Park Street structure, behind the Uptown Palladium movie theater, include concrete patching, water proofing and other repairs to the first three floors. The fourth and fifth floors of the five-story public structure were upgraded a few years ago. Work on the project is set to begin in early April and finish by July.
That's about the same time city officials will complete designs on the Shain Park garage. That project will build 210 spaces in two levels beneath an expansion of Shain Park, downtown's central square, adjacent to The Townsend Hotel. This will be the first public underground parking garage in Birmingham's downtown.
All of it necessary as city leaders push developers to build up and increase density in the suburb, especially in the downtown and Triangle districts. Both sections of town are doing away with surface parking lots in favor of high-density, mid-rise buildings.
Source: Paul O'Meara, assistant director of engineering for the city of Birmingham
Writer: Jon Zemke
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