SLO council approves major parking garage, new SLO Rep Theatre
A major parking garage will be added to San Luis Obispo’s downtown after the City Council approved the project Tuesday night.
The City Council voted 3-0 to move forward with plans for constructing a 50-foot-tall, 404-space garage at the corner of Palm and Nipomo streets — in addition to a new, roughly 23,000-square-foot SLO Repertory Theatre building at the same site.
Two council members, Andy Pease and Aaron Gomez, recused themselves because their businesses are located within 500 feet of the planned project, representing a potential conflict of interest under municipal law.
The new parking structure, which will cost more than $31 million, will serve downtown visitors as well as residents who could park there.
“This garage not only will be helpful for current businesses, but to know we can help the economy and future businesses, that makes me really happy to see,” said Councilwoman Erica Stewart.
The city won’t preserve a landmark home at the site, the Heyd Adobe.
But the council voted to allow City Manager Derek Johnson the discretion to allocate up to $100,000 in city funds to help a private investor or group cover the estimated $1 million cost to relocate the home.
The new SLO Rep theater couldn’t be built at the site while preserving the Heyd Adobe on the same property, thus the need to remove the home or demolish it, city officials said.
About 30 members of the public spoke in public comment Tuesday, and the city received more than 300 emails, many of them in support of the project, advocating for the expanded theater project in particular.
“I can see the need for it and I’m firmly in support,” said Council member Caryln Christianson, adding the project will help accommodate needed new housing downtown.
New theater could nearly triple attendance for SLO Rep
The theater, operated by a nonprofit, will be funded separately from the city-operated parking structure.
SLO Rep’s plan for the new facility calls for two performing areas — one of 193 seats including 49-seat balcony, and a separate wing of 99 bleacher-style seats capable of collapsing for experimental stage options.
“Many of my friends came from tumultuous home lives and they found support, expression and a home through ACT (Academy of Creative Theatre),” said Penny DellaPelle, a SLO High School junior and SLO theater participant. “For everything SLO Rep has done for this community, it greatly deserves this expansion.”
The theater could expand its annual audience from 18,000 to 45,000 to 50,000 people and hold two shows at once.
SLO Rep is projected to begin vertical construction in January 2021 at the earliest, likely taking at least 18 to 24 months, according to Michael Codron, the city’s community development director.
The new facility also could provide needed new space for actors, stage technicians and others.
“We are bursting at the seams,” said Kevin Harris, SLO Rep’s managing artistic director. “We are ready to help transform the downtown core.”
Bettina Swigger, CEO of the Downtown SLO association, said the new venue, providing enhanced art and culture, will help attract people to “come, stay, spend money and participate in civic dialogues like the one we’re having tonight.”
Mayor Heidi Harmon said the new theater will help provide young people and members of the arts community with invaluable opportunities, citing the impact the SLO theater made on her daughter’s life.
“We don’t have a lot of options in the community for young people to find out who they truly are, outside of sports,” Harmon said. “I’m fully in support of this project.”
New parking garage a longtime goal
SLO declared a parking structure at that corner, located across from Mission Prep high school, a major city goal in 2003, and it has gone through several advisory body reviews over the past couple of years.
The future, electric-operated parking garage, providing 24-hour access, will address concerns expressed by neighboring business owners, including Ciopinot Seafood Grille owner Leonard Cohen, who said the structure is badly needed.
The new structure will cost $31 million, including offsite improvements, but not soft costs such as construction management, a parking and revenue control system and environmental impact mitigation, Codron said.
The project is is expected to start on August 2020 with vertical construction for the garage scheduled to begin November 2020, Codron said. The garage is anticipated to be completed by December 2021.
“The parking in downtown is terrible,” Cohen told The Tribune last year. “It keeps getting worse. The city shouldn’t have allowed any developers to build anything until the parking structure was finished.”
SLO officials said they plan to have a strategy to construct the garage with the least amount of impact on downtown businesses and residents, possibly temporarily shutting down Monterey Street for a construction staging area.
The future parking garage will have the capability for nearly a third of its capacity — or 140 spaces — to be outfitted for electric vehicle charging. Initially, it will have 40 EV charging spaces.
It also will have public amenities space on the top floor with views of the surrounding hills and downtown.
Additionally, a planned separate building on one side was included to potentially provide future new housing.
A consultant, Walker Parking Consultants, completed a 2015 report on SLO’s parking that “concluded that the usage of the project is contingent upon development in the area (short and long term) and if long-term projects develop, the structure could see up to a 92% effective supply rate on a daily basis,” according to SLO’s staff report.
“... The structure represents an opportunity to provide parking for future development, efficiently, and in a way that is likely to be more environmentally friendly and walkable for downtown than would individual sites that each provide their own parking,” Walker Parking Consultants wrote.
What happens to Heyd Adobe?
Some members of the public hoping to save the Heyd Adobe argued for it to stay where it is or for the city to find a way to move it.
“We are losing so much of what our downtown neighborhood is,” said Ursula Bishop, a downtown SLO resident. “I’m not hearing that word at all tonight — neighborhood. This is something you can do. You have the ability to save it.”
Dave Hannings, who owns the nearby Hays-Latimer Adobe, hoped the Heyd Adobe could be saved, suggesting a relocation to Mission Plaza, an option the council didn’t find viable.
Staff members wrote that preserving the adobe at the site would “likely delay the project for a year and the city and SLO Rep would incur substantial redesign costs.”
Christianson said that the removal of the Heyd Adobe was a choice between the theater and the adobe, and she chooses “the theater.”
“There isn’t a way to do everything,” Christianson said. “In some cases there’s a win-lose and this may be one of them.”
In the end, the council decided on a middle ground by providing the money to hopefully assist in relocating the historic building.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect the cost and timeline of the project.
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 11:03 PM.
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