Aliyya Swaby Photo
Nesteriak pitches the commission.
East Rock could see more offices spring up in a Nicoll Street warehouse, following approval Wednesday night of the owner’s creation of more parking spaces.
Owner Rakesh Narang asked and received permission from the City Plan Commission to convert the basement of the warehouse at 285 Nicoll St. into a parking garage, meeting parking requirements for future offices on the second floor.
The proposal also includes plans to convert the loading dock areas along Mitchell Drive into two parking lots and re-stripe an existing lot at 268 Nicoll St. for 65 extra spaces.
Soon to be home to both a gym and the refugee resettlement agency Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, the warehouse is currently used to store industrial machinery and stage the Alexion Pharmaceutical construction project.
About 82,000 of the 273,158 square-foot building is planned for offices not yet determined.
The majority of the proposal, said engineer Bryan Nesteriak (pictured at top), is “the adaptive reuse of parking.” The one-level garage will have 93 spaces and include two elevators and stairways to the above building, as well as to the outside. Drivers can access both the entrance and exit on Mitchell Drive.
Have you thought about traffic? asked Commissioner Ed Mattison.
A formal traffic study has not been done and was not asked for, Nesteriak said. Likely the garage will be “heavily underutilized,” he said, with 93 spaces.
City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg said the traffic department looked at the plan during site plan team meetings. No traffic study is required.
This sounds great. I'm sure the developers already thought of this and have reasons for not doing it, but if there will be "heavily underutilized" parking between the basement garage and the loading dock areas, why not build something on the lot at 268 Nicoll? (houses/condos/offices/whatever). It appears the existing neighbors have done a nice job fixing up/maintaining their homes and the street has become very nice. Replacing the lot with a building would really make the street beautiful.
It also appears a number of trees were recently cut down at the edge of the lot. Any chance a couple trees could be planted to replace them somewhere else on the property? (perhaps one in the center of the parking lot and/or along the sidewalk?) Not complaining, overall the plans sound great, good luck.