Plans to fill the ground floor of the Union Station parking garage have hit a major snag; namely, no one wants to move in. For the second straight time, the city’s Request for Proposals for retail tenants in the space garnered no bids. That lack of interest mirrors the initial proposal in early 2008, which was also met with silence. The retail space was originally heralded as a key component of the redevelopment of the garage; one that was supposed to anchor the Canal District, and tie in Union Station to the neighborhood.
July 1, 2009...11:33 am
Union Station Garage: Third time’s a charm?
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6 Comments
July 1, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Good job on this…
RFP history has not been that good. Two RFP’s for parcels at the airport only had one bidder that never bought. The one RFP for a parcel at the South Worcester Industrial Park was awarded to Pharmasphere, last January for $1, but has yet to take title to the property.
July 1, 2009 at 9:49 pm
If you build it, they will not come. Nice job Parkman Mike and Paxton Julie. Well deserved evaluations all around. Standing O!!!!
July 2, 2009 at 12:05 pm
City Square will be different – I just know it will
July 3, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Who wants to hang out in a train station anyway?
At the same time, I’ve taken that train to Boston and back a few times, and the last thing I want to do, after waiting around in that musty, germ-infested train car is 1) stay close to the bottleneck of stressed-out employees trying to get to their cars, 2) remain near the source of caused my head to ache for an hour or so (i.e., the train) and 3) pretend that I am not in a train station.
So, what are saying? Small business in Union Station does not have to be top shelf? What did you expect?
July 6, 2009 at 8:49 am
After a weekend in Boston in which my car was parked in the garage for a 24 hour period I was surprised to find that the fee for using your facility was $22.50. Upon driving into the facility there is a sign that clearly lists the prices for parking in there and it lists overnight parking as being $5.00. Upon seeing this sign, one who is entering your facility would be led to believe that the fee for parking one’s car at the garage would be in the range of $5.00. However, as previously stated, this was not the case. After inserting my ticket into the payment machine to find the amount of money which I “owed”, I proceeded to look for an attendant to help me with my problem. Needless to say, there is no one at the facility to address these issues. After searching for someone who may have some way to address my problem I was told to call a number and someone would come and sort the issue out. Upon calling I was told someone would arrive in 5 minutes. After waiting 25 minutes, and a group of additional patrons lining up waiting to talk to Republic Parking’s representative as they had similar price issues as I did. After waiting an additional 5 minutes another patron called and was given the “supervisors” cell phone number to directly contact him. Upon making contact he showed up 10 minutes later acting as if he was doing us a favor by showing up. After verbally accosting the group of us disputing the fees and basically telling us that we were unintelligent and incapable of reading the sign , we were told to basically suck it up and pay. During no time in his contact with us did he attempt to explain the pricing system or offer us a list of rates. When trying to explain to him the prices on the sign he wanted nothing to do with it. Upon investigating this further I looked at the mbta website which lists the fee at your garage to be no more than 8.00 for a 24 hour period, which once again is significantly less than $22.50.
This is yet another reason why people do not use this garage. On the July 4th weekend, with the train being nearly full of people leaving from Worcester, one would expect this garage to be full. Now I understand why it was empty. Thanks again Worcester for using our tax dollars so wisely!
July 9, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I was one of the people fooled by the “easy to read” sign. I got there at around 2:30pm on 7/4 and got back around 2pm on 7/5. With the $8 a day (which I read as 1 day = 24 hours from when you enter) plus the extra $5 for overnight, I should have paid $13, at most…my bill was $18.50. When we finally got a chance to talk to the manager, he told us to either use the “lost ticket” option ($13.50) or call the police. One of the other customers did call the police, and they said the only option was to go to small claims court. What a mess.