State College Borough Council is moving toward a plan that would extend the life of two aging parking structures for up to a decade before a replacement garage is constructed.
While no formal vote was taken during a work session on Monday night, council members reached a consensus preference for a previously discussed option for repairs and maintenance over a 10-year period for the 53-year-old Pugh Street Parking Garage and eight years for the 34-year-old McAllister Parking Deck.
Combined repair costs to keep both structures safe and operational for those periods total about $2.5 million, Kevin Carrigan, of parking and engineering firm THA Consulting, said at a meeting in June.
In year nine of that plan, the 218-space McAllister Deck would be demolished and a new 750-space garage constructed on the same site to consolidate the parking of both structures before the 491-space Pugh garage is decommissioned.
Council members favored the long-term plan over a shorter one that would prioritize repairs over a four-year period for Pugh and two years for McAllister, with construction on the new garage beginning in year three on the McAllister site. Repair costs for the existing structures under the short-term plan are projected at $682,000.
Specific plans for a new garage are a long way from being determined, but Carrigan presented short- and long-term options along with preliminary cost estimates for an eight-tier garage with 14,000 square feet of retail space at street level. Those options included one with a rooftop solar array and another with provisions for apartment units to be constructed on top of the garage — but not for both, as Carrigan and Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said the projections were meant to give council a general sense of the short- and long-term costs.
Ten-year cost estimates include the repair costs for maintaining the existing garages, site demolition, garage construction, annual maintenance reserve funds, soft costs and inflation factors.
A garage with acsolar array under the short-term plan would have a projected 10-year cost of $57.86 million and under the short-term plan $68.84 million.
For a garage with provisions for residential units, which council members indicated would be used for affordable housing, the projected 10-year cost is $62.63 million under the short-term plan and $74.56 million under the long-term plan.
“You’re repairing the garage for a longer period of time so you have to spend more money to keep it safe and operational at eight years rather than two years, and then just the escalation costs as well,” Carrigan said of the cost difference for the longer timeframe.
Council members generally agreed that the longer-term plan provides a greater opportunity to make the most of the new structure.
“The difference of those six or seven years does a bunch of things,” Council President Evan Myers said. “One, we don’t have to spend all the money to build a new garage immediately. And it buys us time to figure out what the scope of the new garage will be. Or maybe I shouldn’t say garage, but what the scope of this new thing will be, because the idea of solar and housing is very appealing. We need more affordable housing in this town, and this is a way to perhaps do that. We need to figure that out. We’re not going to figure that out right now, even though we might be able to, but it seems to me there’s a lot of different things we get out of delaying this nine or 10 years.”
For both options, construction of the garage alone is projected about $37 million if built sooner and $39 million if built later, before factoring in inflation.
Solar arrays add a projected $3.4 million in either scenario. Carrigan said those figures were based on cost per square foot of past THA projects. Council member Matt Herndon said he will want to know the megawatts for the array to determine if it’s a good deal, and John Hayes said he expects the cost of photovoltaic panels will continue to decrease in the coming years.
“PV panels have followed the same cost curve since 1979, showing a 20% drop in price every time there’s a doubling in capacity,” Hayes said. “At the current rate we’re deploying solar, we can expect three more doublings of capacity over the next six years. I believe that means solar costs in about six years will be half of what they are now on a per panel basis. I understand why this was estimated at a conservative level, but I also think by deferring the replacement and waiting, the solar will be that much cheaper.”
Provisions for residential units add about $4.9 million. Carrigan noted that cost is for structural elements that would be needed to add apartments on top of the garage, but does not include the build-out of the units.
“I think this is a huge project,” council member Kevin Kassab said. “I think we need to really think it out, and… I would love to see affordable housing in it, solar in it. All these things would come into play for us developing an affordable living condition in the downtown. I would definitely say we should try to extend the life of this garage, think this out, get input from the community on it and then move forward with that.”
More time to decide on a plan for the garage is “just so valuable,” Herndon said, because of an increasing emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and public transit usage in the borough, as well as evolving technology such as driverless taxis that could change demand for parking and increased electric vehicles that could alter the needs of the garage.
“Having that time to see this happen is so useful,” Herndon said. “I’m very glad we’re going to be able to wait on this.”
With a consensus among council for the longer term plan, Fountaine said staff can begin incorporating what is needed for the first year of the repair plan for the existing parking structures into the 2026 budget proposal.
“This is just an example,” Fountaine said of the options shown to council. “The final scope of this project is a long way from being handled in terms of what the entire project would look like. This was for the purpose of providing that information so that council had an illustration of what that cost would look like … in making this decision about whether to postpone the project for a period of eight to 10 years or whether to go ahead within the next two to three years.”
FUTURE OF THE BREWERY BUILDING
During his presentation to council, Carrigan said that demolition of the McAllister site would also include “buildings along Beaver Avenue.” The presentation indicated that the retail space component of the garage would be along East Beaver Avenue.
In 2023, Borough Council used eminent domain to acquire an adjacent property containing a rental house at the corner of Beaver Avenue and McAllister Street in anticipation of constructing the new garage, but rescinded a plan to do the same with the neighboring building that houses The Brewery, Canyon Pizza and Music Mart after public outcry.
In response to an inquiry from StateCollege.com about whether the borough was still interested in acquiring The Brewery building, a borough spokesperson wrote in an email: “The owner of the building made a statement at a previous Council meeting that they’d be open to having conversations about selling the building. The Borough did have a meeting with the building owner, and the Borough Council is now considering what the next step will be.”
Jay Horgas, owner of The Brewery and the building that houses the three businesses, told StateCollege.com that he had a “cursory” meeting with borough officials earlier this year, but that no substantive plans were discussed and no decisions have been made.
He added that he doesn’t know what conclusion will be reached but that he is willing to work with the borough.
“My intent was to be included in any planning. That’s all I was aiming for is inclusion,” Horgas said, adding that the garage structure could potentially be built over his building.
FUTURE OF PUGH GARAGE SITE
No determination has been made for how the property will be used once the Pugh garage is taken out of service and demolished, although one plan has been floated for several years.
In 2022, the nonprofit the nonprofit Nittany Performing Arts Centre unveiled a conceptual plan for a complex on the site with an 800-seat multipurpose theater, a 200-seat flexible studio theater, rehearsal studios, community meeting areas, retail space and an attached parking garage.
NPAC representatives are expected to speak at an upcoming council meeting, Fountaine said, but Myers stressed that a decision has not been made for the future of the site.
“Theres a lot of different potential things that could happen there,” Myers said. “There’s been one thing that’s been presented thus far, but especially if we have 10 years, that give us another reason to think about what’s going to happen on that site too, rather than just default to one proposal.”
