The Covington Board of Commissioners approved a roughly $490,000 contract amendment related to designs of the parking garage at the Covington Central Riverfront this week.
The approval came Tuesday in a 3-to-1 split vote in favor. Mayor Ron Washington and Commissioners Tim Acri and James Toebbe voted for approving the contract amendment. Commissioner Tim Downing voted against it, and Vice Mayor Shannon Smith did not attend the meeting.
The work is part of the second infrastructure design phase of the development, which includes designs for the parking garage, as well as an entertainment staging area, a looping road through the area, a land bridge and finally concession and restroom areas. The Covington Board of Commissioners voted to approve an initial version of the contract with architectural firm KZF Design — which headed up the first phase of the site’s infrastructure — in January.
Toebbe had requested last week that the amendment be removed from this week’s meeting’s consent agenda. This meant the commissioners would vote on the contract amendment as a separate item, but they did not discuss their votes in the open session this week.
“The rest of the body wants to be able to move quickly,” Downing said when asked about his vote after the meeting. “I think that now is a good time for us to make sure that we’re moving forward in the way that we want to be moving forward, and I don’t know that that was reflected in the services.”
The area in question is on the north end of the site along Rivercenter Boulevard, according to contract documents from earlier this year. Contract documents from this week indicate the city paused the initial design work for the garage in May to gather more input from prospective developers.
The initial design contract from January carried a price tag of $565,190, and this week’s contract amendment would allow for the design budget to increase by up to $489,898.
The contract amendment states the new garage design aims to accommodate buildings on top of the structure, specifically “up to two separate seven-story office buildings to be located on the west side of the expansion joint and up to two separate two-story buildings to be located between the loop road and land bridge.”
