Kenton County greenlit contractual modifications regarding design work on a project that would construct a large parking garage behind the county government center.
On Tuesday, the Kenton County Fiscal Court approved modifications for Gresham Smith’s contract for the firm’s design work on the Kenton County Administration Building Parking Garage Project in Covington. Gresham Smith is a Nashville-based architecture firm responsible for the garage’s design.
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.
Currently, Gresham Smith is undertaking schematic design revisions on the garage. The contract’s modification proposed a fixed design fee of $163,250 for the effort. The fee factors in costs for services such as architectural/interior design, structural engineering and landscaping.
Originally, Gresham Smith designed the garage to remain underneath the ground. Renderings of the garage show the top of the southward portion of the garage parallel to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
“It was the county’s goal and the design team’s goal to keep the garage as low as possible,” Kentucky State Transportation Leader Nick Hendrix said during the meeting. “To respect not only this building but the broader neighborhood, we went through several iterations to keep that structure buried as much as possible.”
However, after several efforts, Hendrix said Gresham Smith ultimately concluded a portion of the garage would need to be above ground level. This conclusion led to the schematic design revisions. At the moment, the revisions would move the garage closer to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, according to Hendrix.
“We went through a number of frankly heroic efforts to try to keep the garage as low as possible only to get to a point where we had to bring it up out of the ground,” he said.
When traveling north on Main Street behind the government center, the street decreases in elevation. The portion of the garage closer to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. is buried underground more than the northward portion closer to Goetta Place due to the downward slope of Main Street. Because of this, the lower portion of the garage will be out of the ground by approximately 12 feet, Hendrix said.
Kenton County Judge/Executive Kris Knochelman noted that landscaping efforts will be undertaken to beautify the exposed lower section of the garage.
“When we get the final design, the idea is to — whatever is out of the ground — you want to have some cosmetic coverage that blends into whatever goes above it,” Knochelmann said.
The county approved an initial design proposal from Gresham Smith in August. The garage is part of a larger mixed-use development that would construct an apartment complex on top of the parking structure. In September, the state of Kentucky announced it would contribute about $15 million to the project.
