City Talks: Corriveau suggests 1-story garage along Goodale Street; 100 spaces possible

City officials are exploring whether a one-story parking garage along Goodale Street might help solve downtown parking problems.

City Manager Mary M. Corriveau presented the idea Thursday to Advantage Watertown, a group of business leaders that has been talking for months about what to do about downtown parking.

The parking deck would be built on adjacent parking lots at City Hall and a building at 215 Washington St., owned by Advantage Watertown member Brian H. Murray. The deck also may be designed so that it's connected to the parking lot for the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library, she said.

Plans are in their infancy, so few details, including costs, were available Thursday. Mrs. Corriveau said she will start looking for funding sources and contact Saratoga Springs officials about how they got their downtown parking garages built.

Mr. Murray estimated a one-story deck would provide an additional 100 parking spaces in the busy Public Square area.

The recent restoration of the Franklin Building on Public Square is partly driving the city to look at the parking deck, members said. The building, which has 16 apartments, might become the home of a theater for art films that the North Country Arts Council wants to run and another business might lease another portion of its ground-floor commercial space.

Several other downtown property owners are converting the upper floors of their buildings into apartments, committee member John K. Bartow said.

"If there's continuing downtown development, we have to make an investment for that type of development," Mrs. Corriveau said about the parking deck.

Advantage Watertown members talked about parking trends while they looked over a map of where people could park in the area and where the parking deck would be built. They said downtown parking has been an issue for years.

In recent years, some Public Square merchants have complained about a lack of parking near their businesses.

The city owns the J.B. Wise parking lot north of Public Square, now undergoing a $2.3 million revamping, and parking lots on State Street and between Clinton and Stone streets. There also are a number of other parking lots, not available to the public, in the area.