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Home My WebLink About02-21-19621 CQ CC • 1 1 • Record. of Official Proceedings of . the' Common Council 5.9 9w of the. City of Rochester, Minn., February 21, 1962 -- - O6WALD PLJ BLIS RING CD., NEW L1 LM, MINN. A9528 Minutes of a special meeting of the Common Council of the City of Rochester, Minnesota j' held in the Council Chambers in the City Hall, in said City, on February 21, 1962. President Tingley called the meeting to order -at 10:15 o'clock P. M., the following members being present: President Tingley, Aldermen DeVries, Leonard, Morris, Stadler, Wilkus. Absent: -Alderman Wilson. `! + The call of the special meeting was read and President Tingley ordered the same 11r. i; placed on file, the said meeting having been called for the purpose of to finalize plans for i . building of a Parking -Ramp on Parking Lot No. 1 and any other business the said Common Council j, may deem proper. {� Mr. John Chisholm, President of the Rochester Development Company, was present and 1! stated that there has been a lot of misundertstandin in regard to the progress r g g p gress of their committee f ri 'and first he wanted to explain.that and•bring the Council up to date as to what they have ` { accomplished and he has broken the discussion down into (l.) engineering (2) financing and (3) City r and Railroad lease. On the whole project they are right on schedule, if the 'lease is approved i and they are prepared to go ahead and let bids in March and start construction by April 1st; to i accomplish this purpose they found it necessary to actually make some personal commitments, as a r - , I ` result of not having the City lease he could not complete the financeing and consequently there Ij was no assurance that the finances could be procured, this is particularly true when you are {' workingwith the overnment. So the engineering was g g' g procured along at the rate we had anticipated, however, they don't make these drawings for nothing and one day about two weeks ago we found where `I we had to tell the engineers to stop orcommit ourselves to another $20,0002without having the 1� financing complete and without the lease; so my associates asked if we had the finances arranged, �! I said "no", I have to have the lease, the only way to approach this problem of paying for 'the {i engineer is to assume the -worst, is that we don't get the lease and we don't get the financing. �{ We need a ram and the only way to approach the P y y pp probeem 'and the only way is to commit ourselves i r or our institution for $20,000; this work is progressing right on schedule, as we had delayed 1i that decision the engineer had another project he was working on and the 2-3 week delay would have !; made a difference of the completion date of the ramp, so the drawings will be returned on schedule �I and the completion date was set as October 1, 1962. It was the opinion of the Downtown Retail y' Merchants that if the ramp was not completed until November or December the shoppers would not learn that it was ready and would not be ready until the parking problem was the greatest and in l; discussion with National Garages, they presented a survey of ramps that had been completed in November and December and the operating results were much ri P g poorer than ramps that had been opened I; J at an earlier.date. Financing. Originally we put together a financial package -that we felt we could do and as we progressed we felt there were several obstacles with the original plan. It ( was our intention to sell debentures to downtown retail merchants and people with sufficient i' interest in the amount of $200,000.0Q;to date we have subscriptions that have been executed by these people and the subscriptions total $204,545.00; we have promises for the execution and subscription in an amount that will exceed $210,000.00. Our response from downtown retail 1� h ' tr , 600 Record of Official Proceedings of the 'Commori Council of the City of Rochester,. Minn., February 21, 1962 • d 0,9,WA LOOP LI.9 LI.9,M,I,N,O_C.G.._N.E W_II,LM.._M,I,N.N.�A85 2,8 merchants is excellent, they recognize the problem and are willing to put their money into the future and they know that they money will be returned only after the mortgage -has been paid. The difficulty with,the first mortgage confines itself almost.entirely to the Railroad lease. The insurance company and their attorneys stated that there would be a possibility, in the future of some difficulty with the bond and for that reason they are not interested in financing, they readily admot this was an outside psosibility but it was not impossible and not in accord with the insurance laws. However,;there are still two.insurance companies that are interested. At all times we were prepared in -the event that we could not get the insurance companies to give the first mortgate that we bank locally in conjunction with some of our corresponding banks. We could'not make a formal application because we did not have the lease,.so when we make a,decision to to contract responsibility for and additional $20,000 my associates asked me to go to Washington D. C. and meet with the proper authorities showing the set-up in getting a tentative commitment. This is difficult to do but I did go to Washington and met with the heads of the companies and met with the heads of the companies and gave them copies of the proposed lease, the Articles of Incorporation, a projected financil statement, information on downtown parking lots and a letter regarding the financing; I talked with everyone in the, agency that would have anything to do and they made a commitment that the facts were agreeable, if we obtained a lease from the City, they would grant the loan and they instructed him to go back and get the lease and mail.it to Washington and they said when it came it probably would not take longer then two days, so far as the financing is concerned there is no problem. To make our formal loan we must have the lease. When S.P.A. reviewed, in my presence, the proposed balance sheet we had, they also looked at the lease and indicated to us that R. V. Ehrick, City Attorney, had done the job well. After a•lengthy discussion, Alderman Stadler moved.that the Common Council go on record as approving the proposed lease on parking lot No. 1 and the proposed Management Agreement on Parking Lot No. 3 in the form presented to the -Common Council at this meeting and authorize the Rochester Development Company to proceed on the basis that this lease and agreement is satis- factory, provided a lease is arranged with the Chicago Great Western Railway Company relative to the remaining part of Parking Lot No. 1, which is satisfactory to the City. Alderman Wilkus seconded the motion and upon roll call DeVries, Leonard, Morris, Stadler, Wilkus and Tingley voting "aye", President Tingley.declared the said motion duly passed and adopted. Mr. Leonard Ekstrand was also present and stated that he felt something -should be done about Broadway and felt this ramp was a step toward helping; he said they felt Broadway was almost a slum area and felt that the development corporation, could, under its nonprofit corporate rights do something about urban renewal; he said his group had made investigation of the problem and would be able to undertake projects concerning urvan renewal "if they are allowed to continue. Mayor Smekta stated that he favored such a program and had plans for appointing a committee to study urban renewal possibilities. • • 1 ' 3 Record of Official Proceedings of the .Common Council of the City of Rochester, Minn., February .21, 1962 __CSWALC PUBLISHING CO., NEW ULM, MINN. A8528 ' __ 1 It was noted that the present Building Code provides in Section 'Z503 -(2) FLOOR LOADS E, that no floor erected in a building shall be designated for less than 80 lbs. per• squre foot in Garages for -passenger cars only and it was requested that this be changed to 50 lbs. per square foot for the proposed parking ramp. Upon motion by Wilkus, second by Stadler, and all. voting in favor thereof,. the City Attorney was instructed to prepare•an ordinance amending the Building -Code to provide for this. 1 A motion was then made by Leonard that the Council goon record as commending this group for their efforts in behalf of the community to strengthen the economic handling of downtown Rochester and also that the action in approving the lease will serve to encourage other -investment by private capital toward the maintenance of a stronger downtown business I district. Wilkus seconded the motion and,all:voted in favor thereof. Upon motion by Leonard, second by Wilkus, and all voting in favor thereof, the meeting was adjourned. a