Morgan Street Garage

The garage represents the first public parking infrastructure project in over two decades. The state-of-the-art parking facility has a capacity of 2,300 spaces and employs a number of service oriented technological advances designed to improve the level of parking services presently being offered in the downtown area. In addition, approximately 13,200 square feet of retail/commercial space has been designed into the facility. The newly created space opens opportunities for new enterprises to service the rapidly growing business community located near and around the old Main Street corridor.

The development of the new parking facility was a collaborative effort between the City, the State, the Capitol City Economic Development Authority, the Capital Community Technical College and the newly created Parking Authority. Bringing the project together throughout the various bureaucratic mazes that each organization represents was a crowning achievement. This coupled with the challenges of convincing the various financial rating agencies charged with measuring the validity and financial stability of the Parking Authority to support the debt service proved to only increase the challenge of getting the project initially started.

The garage has contributed to two other recent downtown success stories. The Capital Community Technical College has made their downtown transition more possible by providing their students and faculty with 500 parking spaces in the Garage. United Healthcare renewed their large scale lease in the downtown area in the promise of 650 parking spaces. The city had no viable plan for their spaces until the project was completed.

The recent completion of the new facility and the emergence of the Parking Authority as the agency being charged with the overall public parking management responsibilities have energized the downtown business community. The new facility will allow a redistribution of present and future parking demands, which will not only provide much needed capacity but more importantly repair the parking anxiety that normally accompanies visits to the downtown business community.