City and government officials in Des Plaines,IL recently took the first steps to building a new parking garage near furnished apartments in the city by voting unanimously earlier this month to hire a design firm to start designing the parking garage. The project,which could cost as much as $20.9 million,would double the size of the city’s police station in addition to building a brand new parking garage.
Des Plaines officials say the city’s current 91-space garage is damaged beyond repair,and that the city desperately needs something like the proposed 274-space garage that they are working to bring to the city. The first steps after the vote will be for Walker Consultants,a Hoffman Estates-based design firm,to design the garage itself. The city is paying the company $620,000 for their design,a project that when finished would cost about $9.3M by itself.
“The time has come to do something,” said 7th Ward Alderman Don Smith,who also works on the public works committee.
Des Plaines’ downtown police station near short term rentals “is entirely inadequate right now for the size of our community and the size of our police force,” he added.
Many in the city feel the current police station,which was built in 1971,is outdated and needs to be much nicer and bigger. While they don’t have an estimate for when the station will be completed,officials are eyeing 2021 to have the garage done by.
Police Chief Bill Kushner agrees with Don Smith about the state of the current police station,and has been a big advocate for a new station,saying the outdated facility is in need of an upgrade.
“We have showers that I would not wash my dog in,” Kushner quipped to a newspaper reporter earlier this year.