Fayetteville City Council Mulls Temporary Walton Arts Center Offices

— The City Council next week will consider paying $6,000 per month to lease temporary Walton Arts Center offices.

Aldermen in December 2012 agreed to reasonable rent and moving expenses for temporary office space, because an parking deck project will require tearing down the arts center's administration building on School Avenue.

Meeting Information

City Council

Fayetteville’s City Council is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Room 219 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain St. Agenda items include:

• Changing the start time for council meetings to 5:30 p.m.

• Modifying sections of code related to the downtown overlay district, parking deck requirements and urban residential design standards.

Source: Staff Report

The goal is to have about 30 employees set up in the basement of the Metro District Building at 509 W. Spring St. by the end of June. The building is south of the arts center parking lot. It also houses The Wine Cellar, Crown Beauty Bar and Frickin Chicken.

Parking deck construction, on the south end of the center's property, could begin in July or August, after city officials negotiate a building contract.

"Things are about to move on this deck pretty rapidly," Mayor Lioneld Jordan said at a meeting Tuesday. "You better get your seat belts on."

Jeremy Pate, Development Services director who's overseeing the project, said officials are proposing a 12-month lease with Reindl Management, the company that owns the Metro District Building, at $6,000 per month with an option to extend for up to six additional months.

Pate said he expects parking deck construction to take between 12 and 14 months to complete.

A 14-month lease would cost $84,000 plus moving expenses, which Pate estimated at $5,000.

Alderman Justin Tennant said he was comfortable spending anything less than $100,000.

"We couldn't have necessarily had it budgeted before," Tennant said, "because we didn't know what the dollar amount was going to be. But this was in the ballpark."

The lease will be paid with money from the paid parking program.

The parking deck is being paid for using $6.2 million in bonds. The bonds are backed with paid parking revenue.

Walton Arts Center administrators have said their priority for the temporary office space was having something close to the arts center, so it would be easy to walk back and forth on a daily basis.

NW News on 04/09/2014

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