After reviewing the Solis tax break deal and looking at the parking deck the City purchased through the deal, I had to wonder. How much would it have cost to build a public parking deck outright, without almost 300 apartments attached to it?
According to the construction-estimation website Fixr.com, the national average for a 150,000-square-foot multi-level parking garage in 2022 was $9.75 million.
According to a story by The Gainesville Times, the City of Gainesville in neighboring Hall County opened a seven-story parking deck with 410 spaces in July 2022. The entire thing cost $9 million and there is not an apartment complex attached to it.
The City obtained the $4.95 million to pay for the parking deck out of a $5 million “land rent” payment the City charged the developer early on in the Solis bond-lease tax break deal. So, without the Solis deal, those specific dollars would not have been available for the City.
But what about other sources of funding?
First of all, as you can see in the Capital Improvement Projects budget table, the City is managing to find money for a lot of other projects, including $5.5 million plus for some type of “Downtown” parking next year.
Second of all, the City maintains saved funds that result from the City consistently taking in more tax revenue than it needs. And, they’ve consistently bragged about these funds every year in the four and a half years that I’ve been observing the City of Sugar Hill government. The City is pretty open about going past its own policy.
Mayor Brandon Hembree even bragged on Facebook in September (and again a few days ago) about how much cash the City keeps on hand and the size of the City’s unrestricted reserves.
With that kind of money, the City could have built multiple standalone parking decks like the one in Gainesville with plenty of money left over.
In the past, the City has claimed these reserves are for “emergency,” but is consistently vague about what kind of emergency would require the City to have that kind of cash. In natural disasters, federal and state funds become available. For instance, during the pandemic, the City of Sugar Hill received more than $9 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the bill passed by Congress in 2021 as part of the Federal government's attempt at "COVID relief". The City didn’t even actually incur $9 million in expenses from COVID, and instead spent a large chunk of the money on changes to the stormwater pond next to The Bowl.
In reality, these funds are used for land purchases in which the City typically spends considerably more than the land value. Land purchases like the ones that led to the Solis deal that gave the taxpayers of Sugar Hill and Gwinnett County very little…unless you really like apartments.
In his September post, the Mayor is very open about the fact that the money can safely be spent on projects (of course listing the more popular projects and none of the controversial ones). Interestingly, parking is not part of his list.
It really seems like a matter of priorities. And if the City wants to do something about parking, why not prioritize parking?
The more you look at this Solis deal, the more it seems like it was less about addressing a parking shortage, and more about addressing some people’s perceived apartment shortage.
On that basis, and that basis only, this deal was clearly a winner.
