@BlogKCThis spring we mentioned that suburbanite Shirley Helzberg asked for millions of dollars of KCMO tax money for a new project in the Crossroads Arts District. While the project was a noble one to rehab a building with offices for the Kansas City Symphony, the catch was that she wanted KCMO taxpayers to subsidize a parking garge for symphony employees. And the new garage would be across the street from a city-owned garage for the Performing Arts Center.
The TIF Comission deadlocked on the proposal and passed it onto the City Council without a recommendation. This week the City Council’s Finance Committee sided with Helzberg and agreed that symphony employees shouldn’t have to walk across the street for parking, and included the new garage in the Vitagraph Building renovation.
This is REALLY good news!…. For Shirley Helzberg.
Walking across the street would be kind of far….if you’re a lazy midwesterner.
Kansas City should market itself as the “City of Parking Garages”. We could have a double-decker bus to drive tourists around so they can admire and take photographs of our many parking garages.
and people still don’t think light rail will work here? how many otherwise usable parcels must we surrender to temporarily stacking these polluting devices? will it at least have a green roof and outlets for future plug-ins?
i wonder if the garage will be open to citizens — at a fee, of course — after business hours? honestly, doesn’t the public have to benefit in some way?