The Greensboro City Council didn’t show much interest in the February One Parking Deck and Westin Hotel project at the Tuesday, Feb. 21 meeting.

After discussing whether to allocate $1.5 million or $1 million to Habitat for Humanity for well over an hour and finally settling on $1 million with the $500,000 diverted to go to minority contractors, the City Council spent only a couple of minutes allocating an additional $5.8 million for the February One parking deck.

The city had previously allocated $37 million for the parking deck, so that raises the cost to the city to nearly $43 million.

Councilmember Zack Matheny asked the only question about the allocation.  He asked for a report on how the $5.8 million was going to be spent.

Matheny said that he had two requests concerning the expenditure.  He said that one was “that there were zero administrative fees associated with the increases and that was confirmed.”

Matheny also said he would like to see, “A detailed expense report on the cost and clarity of the details on the overruns.”

Matheny added, “Tai [City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba], I don’t expect it right now.”

It took two motions to allocate the $5.8 million in additional funding and they both passed without further discussion on 8-1 votes with Councilmember Sharon Hightower voting no.  Hightower has consistently voted against the parking, deck which is reportedly going to be completed next month.

When the February One parking deck was in the planning process, concern was expressed about having parking decks stretch along two and a half blocks of Davie Street.  The February One parking deck is across East Market Street from the existing Davie Street parking deck.  At the time it was said that the new February One parking deck wouldn’t look like a parking deck.

The photo above is how the parking deck that is supposed to be weeks away from opening looks this week.  While it doesn’t look much like the renderings, it does look an awful lot like a parking deck.