Santa Monica’s City Council reconvenes on March 8 for its regularly scheduled meeting at City Hall, with a $60 million bank term loan highlighting the core issues to be discussed at the Tuesday meeting; also, the council has parking, water, and entertainment issues slated to be discussed on its agenda.
A special joint meeting with the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) will be convened at the council meeting to discuss the bank term loan agenda item, as city staff recommended it “enter into an agreement with Wells Fargo Bank … and take all necessary actions, to obtain a bank term loan in the amount of $60 million for purposes of financing redevelopment priority capital projects.”
According to the City of Santa Monica’s Housing and Economic Development department, the $60 million bank term loan will be used to fund four key projects that are ready to go, including Palisades Garden Walk, Pico Branch Library, Parking Structure 6 and the Civic Auditorium renovation.
“Several of the Agency’s priority capital projects … have achieved significant critical path milestones in design development, community input, environmental analysis and construction cost estimates. A next major step for (these projects) is financing,” Andy Agle, director of Housing and Economic Development, stated in his staff report to the council and RDA.
Also up for discussion at the March 8 council meeting is an interim downtown parking plan in light of the elimination of Parking Structure 2, the hiring of Nederlander Organization to establish programming at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and the construction of new City-owned parking structures pursuant to the Bayside Specific Plan and the Downtown Parking Program.
A study session will also be held to discuss the City’s ability to achieve water self-sufficiency by 2020.
