Image Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers The garage will also be used by patrons of the adjoining Marriott hotel, which will be built by Penn Square Partners.
The convention center and hotel are just one block away. Weaver did not give a cost estimate for the garage.
Penn Square Partners, a limited partnership, consists of general partners Penn Square General Corp., a High Industries affiliate, and Penn Square Ltd. LLC, an affiliate of Lancaster Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Lancaster New Era, Intelligencer Journal and Sunday News.
Going higher?
While the proposal Monday involved a seven-story garage, project architects noted they are already looking at the possibility of expanding the building to 7½ stories.
"We've had traffic studies done," Weaver noted, "to get a clear handle on what the future parking needs may be, and we are now trying to determine if a 7½-level garage would be necessary to satisfy those needs."
The LNP garage is one of four city parking garage plans in various stages of development. The city Parking Authority is constructing a facility in the 100 block of East King Street that will provide store-front space and 466 parking spots. A planned garage/condominium project is proposed for the northeast corner of Queen and Chestnut streets. And a 300-space garage behind the now-vacant Lancaster Press Building is in its planning stages.
The Historic Commission took no action on LNP's Prince Street garage plan Monday as it was submitted for review, not a final vote. The conceptual review process enables project developers to unveil preliminary designs and gather input from board members before returning at a later date to obtain approval on final designs and building materials.
The problem for garage designers, Greenfield Architects Ltd., was how to make a seven-story building fit into a largely residential environment or, as Greenfield representative Ross Ansel noted, "It's a garage, but we didn't want to make it look like a garage."
The 22,000-square-foot structure will be the same height as the LNP garage directly to its rear. The exit from the garage will be where the parking lot's current entrance/exit gate is near Prince and Mifflin streets. The entrance will be farther south on Prince Street, allowing cars to queue inside the garage rather than on the street.
Ansel displayed photographs his firm took of buildings surrounding the garage to explain how project designers undertook "contextual studies" to determine how the garage's face would adapt to the neighborhood.
In the end, architects opted for a "tripartite design" that will both break up the weight of the monolithic structure and reflects the combination of brick and stone materials found in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The garage ground floor will consist of combination window/grill "storefront" systems that mimic a retail landscape while preventing people from seeing into the interior of the garage.
Commission member Bruce Evans noted the problems surrounding the project's scale, citing its particular impact on pedestrians. "You have to take something that is behemoth and scale it down."
In that regard, he added, "it's a good idea to break it up into sections."
Board members did express concern that the use of varied materials, specifically a cast-stone element, tended to make the design, Evans remarked, "seem complicated. I wonder, is it all necessary?"
Commission member Bill Burke also noted that many windows in the existing neighborhood contained some arched features, while the window openings of the garage did not reflect that characteristic.
The architects said they would take the board's suggestions into account before presenting final plans for approval, hopefully at the commission's meeting Dec. 17.
