Construction on the Bob Crane Community Center continues to be on track and within budget, and the excitement is mounting in anticipation of a Spring 2025 grand opening.

Making sure the Community Center and surrounding Kingsdale Mixed-Use development has adequate public parking available to meet the district’s needs has been a priority throughout the planning process.

As initial design ideas for the Community Center were developed, it was hoped that below surface and/or additional surface parking surrounding the building could be included, however, both options proved too challenging to accomplish. The building’s footprint significantly hampered the number of spaces that could be incorporated below ground, and the ground level emerged as premium space for what would be some of the more heavily used facilities, such as the pool, child watch and exercise floor.

The design team switched focus to other parking options, with the parking area at the north end of the Giant Eagle parking lot – which is part of a parking easement agreement between the City and Echo Kingsdale, LLC – emerging as an ideal location for a parking deck. The design team got to work and developed a plan that would provide a total of 310 parking spaces on two levels, bringing the total amount of available parking within the Kingsdale Mixed-Use Project to more than 900 spaces, with the following breakdown of space availability:

• 586 spaces within the adjacent apartment building. This includes 37 limited mobility spaces and 12 ADA spaces.
• 17 spaces in the courtyard between The Coventry Senior Living building and the Community Center. This includes six ADA spaces.
• 31 parallel spaces surrounding the Community Center, including nine limited mobility spaces.
• 310 spaces in the parking deck, including eight ADA spaces.

This significantly exceeds parking standards for a development project of this size and will provide a welcome buffer during peak usage of the Kingsdale area.

In February, City Council approved a contract with Elford, Inc. for the construction of the parking deck. Construction is scheduled to begin in April with completion by late fall 2024, in plenty of time for the start of the holidays and well in advance of the opening of the Bob Crane Community Center next Spring.