Quote Originally Posted by Comm'l Real Estate Guy View Post
Onthestrip, I'm not qualified in the parking garage area, but I think they cost even more than that. $10,000/spot is what they might be bought for, but I'm not sure they can built for that. Back to your point, if OCU built a 500 space garage and it cost $10,000/space....that's a $5,000,000 garage. There might be money from other sources available for that garage, but I bet people would cry foul over public money being spent this way.
Like I said, it has already been done. Public money has already been used to build structured parking for a private development downtown, with no public outcry that I know of. That's the type of thing TIFs were created for, and in fact as far as I know can't be used for purposes OTHER than providing incentive for private development within the area of the TIF district in question. Outcry happens when people don't understand the TIF mechanism and confuse the money with money from the City's general fund.