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Downtown Dover parking garage plans stall

Milton Pratt
/
Delaware Public Media

Plans for a parking garage in downtown Dover are on hold.

City officials have noticed over the past three years a growing need to address parking problems downtown.

“We have two four-story buildings that are going to be constructed in the center of Dover and we have numerous businesses that are continuing to open,” said Mayor Robin Christiansen.

 

He says those buildings and other businesses that may come to the City prompted Dover to put out a request for proposal (RFP) to find a private company to open a multi-level parking garage.

 

“With their money, with them providing security, managing it and keeping it clean, we put that out," said Christiansen. "We had two respondents respond back - they said that the way the current RFP is written it would not be profitable for them and they needed to control all the service parking in downtown Dover.”

Christiansen notes one developer that responded wanted to charge a $12.50 daily rate to park in an effort to recoup the cost of constructing the garage.

Christiansen says city officials now plan to go back to the drawing board along with the Downtown Dover Partnership Parking Committee to develop a new RFP to put out for bid.

 

Christiansen says the new RFP must make a parking garage profitable for all parties involved.

He says two potential sites for a parking garage are an empty parking lot on Bradford Street and the old Acme Grocery Store on Route 13.

 

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.