Plans For Governors Avenue Parking Garage Push Forward

City Hall is moving forward with plans to construct a parking garage on Governors Avenue that will likely take a bond to be paid for.

Department heads and a project team within City Hall have held a series of recent meetings to begin schematic plans, and a meeting was held by the Office of Community Development and project architects with direct abutters earlier this week, said Lauren DiLorenzo, Medford's planning director.

Architects are in the preliminary stages of developing a schematic for the garage. Early plans call for the garage to be four stories with between 175 and 200 parking spaces, DiLorenzo said.

The city aims to have finalized drawings for the project by the end of July, with a hearing for public input before then, she said.

No dates have been set for breaking ground yet because the a source of funding for the project hasn't been identified.

Early estimates said the garage would cost about $7.5 million. DiLorenzo said she would like to see the project paid for with a bond, but that will ultimately be up to Mayor Michael McGlynn, city budget chief Stephanie Muccini-Burke and the City Council.

“There isn’t enough grant money out there for a project like this,” DiLorenzo said.

Parking in Medford Square has been a hot issue in Medford. The city council passed a resolution calling for parking enforcement to be implemented in the Medford Square before plans proceeded for the garage. But McGlynn held a pre-bid conference for prospective project manager in November, which some councilors called a "."

The issues over the garage were part of what led to Councilors Michael Marks and Robert Penta to call for a , a measure that in December.

In the beginning of April, where patrolmen for the Medford Police Department monitor the area when they aren't taking other calls and issue parking tickets to violating vehicles.