Two agreements regarding Kenton County’s ongoing parking garage project on the county government center campus were approved during Tuesday’s fiscal court meeting.
The first was a Guaranteed Maximum Price agreement between Kenton County and Cincinnati-based Dugan & Meyers — the project’s general contractor. The agreement details the project’s scope of work, budget clarifications and pricing structure.
“This is the last piece of our agreement with Dugan & Myers to construct the garage back there,” Kenton County Administrator Joe Shriver said during the meeting. “Given the timing of it, we are going to have to align schedules down the road, but because we got this (financial agreement), we hammered this out the last couple of weeks, we’re going to go ahead and approve it and then give them a notice to proceed.”
Shriver added that the county expects Dugan & Meyers to begin the project on Sept. 11. The fiscal court approved the development contract with Dugan & Meyers in July.
The second agreement is an amendment to the county’s initial agreement with Gresham-Smith — the project’s architect. Gresham Smith is responsible for the garage’s design.
“This is simply a zero-change proposal,” Shriver said. “They (Gresham-Smith) had moved some hours around to accommodate, again, based upon construction schedules, we may need to make an adjustment down the road, but right now, because of the changes we had made, and with the timing, they asked for a zero-change proposal.”
A zero-change proposal is submitted by either a project team or contractor that outlines a modification to the project without changing its cost, schedule or scope. In this case, Gresham-Smith amended its service agreement with the county.
Since its initial approval, Kenton County has greenlit modifications to the parking garage’s design. In late February, the county approved schematic design revisions undertaken by Gresham Smith, the project’s designer.
The garage is set to be constructed to the rear of the Kenton County Government Center bordering Main Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., also referred to as 12th St. Once completed, the garage will have 248 parking spaces, most of which will be underground.
As part of the pre-construction process, Kenton County is in the process of demolishing three homes at 514, 512 and 510 Martin Luther King Blvd. in Covington to make room for the prospective parking garage.
As of August 29, all three building have been demolished.
Currently, the Kenton County Government Center features a surface parking lot with over 100 spots in front of the building. An additional 160 parking spots are located underneath an elevated portion of Interstate 71/75.
Once construction on the $3.6 billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project starts, several parking spots underneath the interstate will be eliminated. As such, the new parking garage will supplement the parking lost to construction.
Last September, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray announced that the state would contribute $15 million toward constructing the parking garage.
Additionally, a multi-family apartment complex is planned to be built on top of the parking garage. Last December, Kenton County announced that it had selected the developers of the prospective apartment complex, Al. Neyer and Urban Sites. The complex will feature 25% studios, 50% one-bedroom and 25% two-bedroom rental units.
