Parking garage plans fall apart That means plans for a new bus terminal downtown also have crumbled.

By CHRISTINA HEADRICK St. Petersburg Times, published June 19, 2001
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CLEARWATER -- A first-of-its-kind partnership to build a downtown parking garage on top of a new bus terminal was pronounced dead Monday.

Negotiations involving the city, the Church of Scientology, Pinellas County and the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority failed to produce a deal to make the project work. Several months of talks ended last week, after one last-ditch effort to save the project.

"We really did try," said Assistant City Manager Garry Brumback.

"Everybody worked really hard to try to make this work. Nobody was the bad guy here. . . . We just ran out of time and money."

The garage was to be built at the site of the PSTA's downtown terminal at 525 Park St. and an adjacent county parking lot.

The project's death means that a new transit terminal will not be built downtown, although the PSTA has worked on the project for four years. Instead, the PSTA will spend about $500,000 to renovate the downtown bus station, improving the bathrooms and lighting, PSTA Executive Director Roger Sweeney said.

The city, meanwhile, will have to keep looking for other places to build a garage, which would be an incentive for other downtown redevelopment projects.

The Church of Scientology will ask the City Commission on Thursday to swap some land with the church so that the church can build a private garage with about 430 spaces to serve its new Flag Building, slated to open late next year.

Under the defunct proposal, the PSTA would have used the first floor of the proposed garage for an expanded downtown bus terminal. But the deal fell apart when the PSTA declined to chip in an extra $1-million to $1.3-million in financing to reinforce the terminal so that a public parking garage could be built on top of it.

"I could only do some much with the kind of funding that we have,"

Sweeney said.

Sweeney said the PSTA was willing to commit a $2.5-million federal grant to the project, but under federal rules, the funds could be used only for the terminal and not for any parking structure. Sweeney said his agency simply didn't have any more money.

Neither did the city. As it was, the city was planning to contribute $3-million to the project, half of which wasn't in any city budget.

The two other partners in the project -- Pinellas County and the Church of Scientology -- had no more funds to contribute either, Brumback said. The plan called for the county to provide land and $250,000 or more to the project. The church was ready to spend about $4.2-million, buying into the garage at a rate of about $9,800 per space, Brumback said.

As the negotiations continued into June, it became apparent that a deal would not be hammered out in time to meet two deadlines, Brumback and Sweeney said.

The Church of Scientology wanted to have a garage site planned by June's end, so that a parking garage would be ready when the Flag Building opened.

The PSTA must decide how to spend its federal grant money by October.

PSTA officials now plan to use $500,000 for the terminal renovation in downtown Clearwater and discuss how to spend the $2-million on other projects, Sweeney said.

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