Tag Archives: Riverfront Village

City of Peoria, Riverfront Village

Riverfront Village falling apart

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In June 2010, the City Council voted to replace the steps up to the Riverfront Village platform because they were all rusted out. That was blamed on the salt used to melt ice on the steps in the winter, and the basic design of the steps which apparently had insufficient drainage. Now it’s the concrete platform itself that’s falling apart — literally:

Concrete fell from underneath the Riverfront Village platform onto the parking lot below
Close-up of exposed rebar where concrete has fallen away

Hard to blame this on ice-melt, since, to my knowledge, the City isn’t salting the underside of the platform in the winter. This week’s Issues Update gives some more detail:

A portion of concrete fell from the ceiling of the parking deck about two weeks ago onto a car causing minor damage to the vehicle. National Garages was contacted and advised staff of this incident. In response, staff decided to check the other areas of the garage and have determined there were sections of loose concrete that could potentially separate from the structure and could fall. Currently, staff is removing loose concrete to avoid future incidents. As these areas are exposed, we will engage a structural engineer to review the work. We will also be working to remove some of the rust from the steel and repaint. Sealing these areas with new concrete is not yet planned as we need to determine the full scope and find a contractor to perform this work. We will most likely need to bring this forward to City Council as the costs will exceed $10,000.

Riverfront Village is twelve years old. Twelve years old and already falling apart. This has to be an embarrassment to the contractor/sub-contractor responsible for building this platform. It should be, anyway. Hopefully the City will take the time to look up who did the work originally and at least make sure they don’t hire the same company to fix it.

Best-case scenario: the structural engineer finds that the whole structure is unsound and must be razed. No offense to the tax-paying businesses on the platform; I’d like to see them stay in business downtown. But the platform never should have been built, and the riverfront would be better off without it. There are plenty of places nearby for the restaurants to relocate . . . like the retail space promised on Water Street by the new museum. If you find your home having damage like this and need help with claims, talk to experts like LMR Public Adjusters and get help.

City of Peoria, Riverfront Village

Questions about Old Chicago and Riverfront Village

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By now, you’re all aware of Old Chicago’s big announcement about their location atop Riverfront Village: they’re closing for the winter. The story was covered by WMBD-AM and the Journal Star. From WMBD:

Old Chicago along Peoria’s riverfront is closed until April 4th, according to CFO Dale Paulsen. Paulsen says it’s best for the riverfront restaurant to open on a seasonal basis until there’s a lure of more customers to the area.

This decision has raised a number of questions in my mind.

First, why are they waiting until April to reopen? Isn’t March Madness one of the busiest times of the year downtown? Why would a pizza restaurant want to miss a time when 20,000 people a day — most of them young kids who presumably would like pizza — descend on Peoria’s Civic Center? They’re going to open up right after this large event?

Second, what impact is this going to have on the City financially? We’re already losing money on this due to a non-profit organization moving into the old Damon’s instead of a tax-paying restaurant or other retailer, plus we’re having to replace the defective stairs at taxpayer expense, even though that should have been the developer’s responsibility. Now we’re going to lose sales tax and HRA revenue for three months, too? What implications does this have on repayment of the bonds used to build Riverfront Village?

Third, they really expect the museum to be their salvation? If they won’t open the doors when 20,000 people a day are downtown (March Madness), why would a supposed 1,000 people a day (predicted by the museum group) be worth their while? And if museum patrons wouldn’t park in Riverfront Village’s lot and walk across the street to see the museum due to fears of safety, weather conditions, or whatever reasons were given for requiring an attached parking deck, wouldn’t the reverse also be true?

Fourth, I thought Riverfront Village was built to lure people to the riverfront. Now Old Chicago is wanting customers to be lured by something else? Doesn’t this point to a fundamental failure of the Riverfront Village plan? Former Mayor Jim Maloof was quoted by the Journal Star in 1995 as saying, “The entire community is going to be thrilled when they see the magnitude of this project and what it is going to do for our downtown.” Fifteen years later, what has it done for our downtown, exactly?

City of Peoria, Parking

Ticket booths and gates to be removed from Riverfront Village

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The Issues Update this week included this tidbit of news about the parking lots at Riverfront Village. It looks like they’re going to be taking out the ticket booths and gates that have gone unused for the past four years:

The City owns and operates several parking lots on the Peoria Riverfront. These are the Michel Bridge East and West Surface Lots, Edgewater Lot and Liberty Lot, which are collectively known as the MEL Parking Lots. These lots are controlled by means of three sets of ticket booths and gates, which are accessed from Water Street.

Since 2006, the MEL Lots have been posted 2-hour free parking in an effort to promote short term parking for customer use. (Parking meters and permits are available in these parking lots for long term parkers.) During this time, the ticket booths have been vacant and the gates lifted. Complaints have been received from business owners in the area who feel that the ticket booths sometimes confuse new visitors trying to park in the lots.

These facilities have been left in place in case the City would reinstitute an hourly charge in these lots. If charges were to be reinstituted, staff feels the best way to implement this would be through an unmanned area parking system where patrons pay at kiosks. It seems unlikely that the City would choose to provide manned ticket booths for this area in the future. Since these facilities appear to no longer serve a purpose, they should be removed to create better access to the Lots and to remove any confusion by the motorists.

The Public Works Department, using in-house labor and equipment, plans to remove the ticket booths and gates and to provide clearer signage for these lots. The first priority will be to remove the gates at the foot of Liberty Street to allow two-way access to the Lots during the Water Street construction. The rest of the ticket booths and gates will be removed over the course of the summer, as scheduling allows.

City Council, City of Peoria, Riverfront Village

Cost to replace Riverfront Village platform stairs: $265,617

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The Riverfront Village platform was built in 1999 at a cost of roughly $9.5 million — $4.5 million of which was public tax money that won’t be paid off until 2018.

And yet, despite the fact that it’s only been 11 years, the stairs leading to the platform have rusted “very pre-maturely…to the point that complete replacement is necessary.” The bids are in, and the cost to replace the stairs is more than a quarter million dollars — $265,617 to be exact. Riverfront Village developers Mike Wisdom and Monte Brannan have declined to help with those costs, according to the Request for Council Action. Instead, the council communication says, “The Developers are committed to a separate improvement which will allow access to the platform and pads during periods of high water. It is hoped that the stair improvement and the alternative entry will help the businesses on the pad to prosper.”

Here we have a project that was designed precisely as a solution to the flooding problem. They knew the area floods and so they devised the raised concrete platform as the answer to that challenge. But they used materials for the steps — the part that would be under water during flooding — that evidently were not rust-resistant, and they designed no alternative entry to the platform that could be used during periods of high water. A rather staggering oversight, wouldn’t you say?

Now that the stairs are about to fall off the platform, the developers are not offering to help pay for their replacement. Instead, they’re offering to correct another design flaw, and acting as though that sort of evens the score. I don’t get it. The developers should stand behind their product and incur at least some of the cost of replacing the stairs. And the City should exercise some serious oversight of this new “alternative entry” the Developers want to build to ensure the taxpayers won’t have to replace that, too, in another eleven years.

Heartland Partnership

Infrastructure projects list released

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From a press release:

Peoria, IL – (January 15, 2009) The Heartland Partnership and the Tri County Regional Planning Commission have been gathering a list of regional infrastructure projects that could benefit from President-elect Obama’s proposed infrastructure stimulus recovery project. The goal is to have a list of potential projects ready when the new administration gives the go ahead for the stimulus package.

The Heartland Partnership President and CE Jim McConoughey said this group has been working to gather this list since early December. “This is an evolving project. As we compile our list, Washington DC is compiling the criteria. This list enables us to have the necessary information at our fingertips when it’s needed.”

The group released details on that list today at the Heartland Partnership Office. Over two hundred projects were submitted from 41 municipalities in eight counties including Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Mason, Logan, Fulton, Marshall and Stark. The list includes development, road, water, sewer, schools, and community projects.

McConoughey said the anticipated federal stimulus package is approximately $800 billion and as the President and Congress unfold the various components of the plan, it will be important for our communities to decide what we consider success. This stimulus package is about creating jobs in our communities and across the nation, McConoughey said. “So if any project on this list receives funding it will mean jobs in our community. And when people have jobs, they shop in local stores, they buy or rent homes, and they pay taxes and contribute to the overall welfare of the community in a variety of ways. So any project on this list that receives funding is a success for the larger community.”

The next step is to get this list to our lawmakers. McConoughey will be traveling to Washington DC and Springfield to deliver the list to the Illinois delegation in the coming weeks. He went on to say that the work is not over, “We will continue to monitor the rules and keep an eye on any changes that may affect projects in our region. If invited to submit more detailed information on this list, we will do so. And if local project leaders need assistance we will help them find it.”

Here’s the list in PDF format.

Some of these projects are real head-scratchers — for instance, the “Riverfront Village Stairway Replacement” project. Did some catastrophe happen to the stairs that I missed? Or were they just poorly constructed in the first place? I’m trying to figure out why they need to be replaced already when that development is only (roughly) 10 years old.

And then there’s this one: “Peoria Academy School 27,000 sq ft addition.” I thought these were supposed to be public projects. Peoria Academy is “an independent, private, non-profit school,” according to their own website. Are we now handing out public money to private schools? St. Mark’s is ready to build a new school — I’ll bet they would welcome some of that stimulus money, too.

One more thing: “Riverfront Museum Parking deck construction.” This isn’t significant in and of itself. What’s more significant is the “start date” listed: February 1, 2009. That’s almost three months before the sales tax referendum. They wouldn’t start construction before they knew if they had enough funds to finish the project, would they? That would be most unwise.