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Commissioners test park-first options, underground parking and mixed use for F Lot (Tiger Dredge)
Summary
In a hands-on exercise commissioners favored a park-centric concept for the F Lot (Tiger Dredge) with perimeter mixed-use to help finance buried parking. Ideas included skating rinks, a beer garden, food vendors and strengthened river access; staff warned underground parking is costly.
During a facilitated design exercise, commissioners and staff sketched two development scenarios for the F Lot/Tiger Dredge site to evaluate how a mix of park, housing and commercial uses could fit within the town core. "The consensus was that it should be, a park, an urban park, more of a higher use park," one commissioner said while discussing options to strengthen river connections and cluster development along the parcel edges.
Participants repeatedly returned to the financing trade-off: burying public parking preserves surface green space but requires a developer willing to invest in underground parking. Staff explained that encouraging perimeter mixed-use (retail or hotel) could underwrite a parking structure and create publicly accessible amenities. Commissioners suggested year-round programming—skating rinks in winter, food halls or beer gardens in summer—and stronger pedestrian corridors to link the park to Riverwalk and Park Avenue. The session produced specific ideas for trail alignment, bus/bike access and bathroom placement, and staff will photograph and integrate the exercise into outreach materials for the September immersion workshop.
