Broad Street authority leases more parking spaces to state

State government wants more parking in downtown Richmond.

The new performing-arts center wants a little less in one place and a little more, for the right price, in another.

The Broad Street Community Development Authority tried yesterday to make everyone happy by leasing spaces in one parking deck to the state government and allowing CenterStage Foundation to reduce its obligation to lease spaces in the same deck at night.

But the foundation also is looking for parking at happy-hour prices for an arts-education program it plans to offer to families during weekday afternoons at the new center scheduled to open in September on East Grace Street.

"Unfortunately, parking and the price of parking is a big determinant of whether they come in or not," said Martin J. Rust, chairman of the foundation's parking committee.

The Broad Street authority, created in 2003 to oversee the demolition of Sixth Street Marketplace and redevelopment of the city's old downtown retail corridor, took these actions yesterday:

• Approved an agreement with the Virginia Department of General Services to lease 25 spaces to the state in a two-story parking deck at Sixth and Franklin streets.

• Amended an agreement with CenterStage Foundation to allow the arts organization the option of not leasing almost 100 spaces in the same deck, in addition to 124 spaces the group is committed to using at a surface parking lot across from the former Carpenter Center for Performing Arts on East Grace Street.

• Agreed to explore the option of leasing spaces for $1 an hour at another downtown parking deck between 3 and 7 p.m. in order to support the arts education programs planned at Richmond CenterStage, scheduled to open in September.

Yesterday's actions are part of an ongoing juggling act by the community development authority to expand use of its downtown lots and decks at a time when the recession is cutting into parking revenues necessary to pay off debt from more than $67 million bonds issued six years ago.

A year ago, the authority thought it had found a perfect solution for both the state and CenterStage with a new parking deck that Virginia would build directly across from the new arts center. Since then, the state has decided to build a 1,000-space deck on land it purchased this year at Seventh and East Franklin streets, near the Main Street Centre building it purchased last year.

In the meantime, the state will lease temporary parking in the authority's Franklin Street deck, four floors of which never were renovated because the authority ran out of money.

"This is an interim step until we get our deck built," said Richard F. Sliwoski, director of the Department of General Services. "We are proceeding full-bore."

At the same time, CenterStage Foundation decided it couldn't afford to operate both the surface parking lot and the Franklin Street deck, which has separate entrances for each of its two usable floors.

"It was an economic decision," Rust said yesterday.

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or .