The Monday night meeting between City Commission and the DDA was very brief. The DDA and City Commission agreed to have money from parking fund pay for an engineering safety study to review Center Street parking structure. The study will help ensure that Royal Oak does not have a “Minneapolis problem” on our hands. One of the Commissioners asked that the DDA and City Commission to include the owner of Peking House in development discussions. The thought was that by including the Hunan Palace in discussions, they may ascertain information regarding the possible re-location of the Hunan Palace property. If the Hunan Palace was interested, the city would have a much larger footprint to redevelop Center Street parking structure.

The DDA reiterated that they previously recommended a private/public partnership for possible redevelopment of the Center Street parking structure. It was noted by City Manager Tom Hoover that City Commission had rejected this thought once before. The meeting was short and sweet, and nothing will happen until after the results of the study take place.

I would like the City Commission to engage in a more in-depth discussion regarding a private-public partnership that the DDA had studied. These conversations could spark innovative ideas on how the city could economically fund a new structure.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 9:25 pm and is filed under City Commissioner Meetings, DDA Meetings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.