The Smile Politely Editors are comprised of Justine Bursoni, Seth Fein, Joel Gillespie, Doug Hoepker, Brian McGovern, Ryan Neaveill and Dan Schreiber. They, along with the website designer Mason Kessinger and founding Editor-in-Chief Chris Maier, decide to highlight certain events going on in Champaign-Urbana in a democratic fashion, without bias, in order to best bring to you the finest information on the entertainment around town.
Downtown Champaign’s M2 building is slated for completion in late 2008. As home to the Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works, BankChampaign, four floors of office space and four floors of residential units, the building will draw increased traffic to the evolving downtown area. To accommodate this congestion and the anticipation of future development in the area, a 600-space parking garage will be erected by early 2009 at the corner of Hill and Randolph streets.
The garage is likely to find its most use at night (particularly weekend nights) when parking is in highest demand.
Though going up in tandem with the privately owned M2, the garage will be a publicly funded and operated facility.
“It’s a city deck, so it’s public parking,” Shirl Johnson, parking operations supervisor, says. Parking fees will be collected by an attendant or automated credit card machines.
The contract for construction will be voted on at the March 18 Champaign City Council meeting. If the current proposal is accepted, the contract will be awarded jointly to English Brothers and A & R Services for the construction of the $10,590,000 garage.
Comments (2)
Friday, March 14, 2008 9:04 PM
Not in the immediate future. In the next decade, yes.
Saturday, March 15, 2008 5:59 AM
It will not help the retail stores in the core of downtown. But from what I know, the City Council never cared or even asked the bussiness owners about what they thought. I just cant wait for the trouble to start in the deck when the bars let out at two in the morning. Who's going to clean up that mess?