More money for less parking: Wichita OKs extra $4M for The Hub near Riverfront Stadium
The Wichita City Council approved a price increase on Tuesday for the multimodal center and parking garage near Riverfront Stadium — a project that has increased in cost and decreased in size.
The Hub, 217 S. Sycamore, will be a parking garage with offices for the city’s transit employees, a bus ticket counter inside and 12 parking bays for city buses in the Delano neighborhood. It’s planned for a lot to the west of Riverfront Stadium in the Delano neighborhood.
Since being approved in 2020, it has escalated in price from $19 million to $26 million while the number of parking spaces has been reduced by 100.
The city had previously cut the top floor out of the project because of cost, reducing the number of parking spaces from 500 to 400 while the budget for the project grew from $19 million to $22 million. And on Tuesday the council unanimously approved an additional $4 million for the project.
That money will come in the form of $2 million from the Wichita Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and $2 million the city set aside after selling the Hyatt Hotel in 2018. City staff said the increase was necessary because all bidders were at least 20% over budget when the project went out for bid this summer.
The cost increase wasn’t scheduled to be debated on Tuesday as it was on the consent agenda, but Mayor Lily Wu pulled it for discussion and attempted to change her vote after she had already voted for it.
“It concerns me a lot,” Wu said of the cost increase. “And, again, I was not part of that council when we moved forward with this, but it concerns me knowing the increases of this specific project. So I’m not comfortable moving forward, but, again, I’m just one person. I know that this is just to approve the increase in the budget so that you can put it out to bid again, so I will abstain from that vote.”
Wu’s motion to reconsider and vote again on the extra $4 million failed because no other council member would second her motion.
The mixup happened because Wu pulled agenda Item No. 14, approving a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation, for discussion and separate vote instead of The Hub budget, which was Item No. 9.
Wu voted with the rest of the council on the items that weren’t pulled for discussion, including the price increase for The Hub.
It’s the second week in a row Wu has struggled with the city’s consent agenda.
Last week, Wu tried to invalidate a vote from January where she and the rest of the council approved ordinance changes that designated all public parking downtown as metered parking, increased parking fines for any violations and deputized a fleet of private parking enforcers to issue parking tickets using automated license-plate readers.
Wu said she didn’t know what she was voting on when she approved it because the ordinance changes had misleading titles in the agenda that did not mention parking.
“This in particular is very difficult for some individuals in our community to read, so I would like to direct staff from now on to please also include a plain description of each consent item on second reading so the public will have a better understanding of each item in the consent agenda’s second reading.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2024 at 11:20 AM.