Land-use committee forwards vacations for Proscenium 3 after detailed parking and public‑space review

The Land Use & Special Studies Committee voted April 28 to forward two ordinances vacating city land to enable the Proscenium 3 development, following a presentation from redevelopment staff and an extended discussion about parking, hotel and public‑space design.

Henry Musetzky, redevelopment director, told the committee the project’s program has changed since earlier presentations: “the office building grows from 60,000 square feet to a 100,000 square feet,” and the hotel component includes a “6,000 square feet of restaurant” as part of the negotiated package. Musetzky said the developer and staff revised parking assumptions to reflect mixed‑use peak demand, and that total structured parking has dropped from 508 spaces to 440 in current designs.

The presentation walked the committee through site plans showing an office building, multifamily units, a hotel with meeting spaces, a restaurant, and a podium garage with parking beneath. Musetzky emphasized that parking modeling counts residential demand by bed (221 beds were cited) and factors in peak daytime demand from the 100,000‑square‑foot office. He said staff also included 20 city parking spaces in the calculations as part of a conservative estimate.

Committee members pressed the project team about how plaza and courtyard spaces would function as genuinely public amenities rather than private resident amenities. Agency staff explained those areas would be recorded as public through declarations and governed by plaza‑management agreements that set reasonable rules for use while meeting lender requirements. As Musetzky put it, the agreements make the spaces “open to public beneficiaries, but also subject to reasonable rules.”

On financing, staff reported a change in the TIF split tied to the project: the arrangement will move to a 100% TIF allocation from a prior 95/5 structure, and Musetzky said that change will be handled by the redevelopment commission (CRC) rather than by council action. He told the committee that the vacation approvals being considered were effectively the last council vote required on the land vacatur portion and that additional substantive design changes would be returned to council through established ADLS and planning reviews.

After discussion about process and safeguards, a committee member moved and the chair seconded a motion to forward both vacation ordinances (ordinance d-28-15-26 and ordinance d-28-16-26) to City Council with a positive recommendation. The motion carried on a voice vote and both ordinances were advanced to council for consideration.

Next steps: the items will appear on the City Council agenda and the finance committee review is scheduled (staff noted a May 13 review in the committee exchange).