Engineer to Study, Prepare Plans For Longview Farm Parking Expansion

A vote at Monday night's meeting takes the city another step closer to adding additional parking spaces to .

Aldermen voted to  The vote also appropriated $15,000 for the engineerig contract with Sterling Engineering.  

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The vote comes after the June 11 board of aldermen meeting, where Alderman Skip Mange updated aldermen on the parking study and asked aldermen to appropriate $15,000 for the engineering contract. Mange also heads up the committee studying the parking situation and recommending the expansion project that will add an estimated 15 parking spots to the park.

Mange said by bringing on an engineer, the city is making a commitment to the project, but this does not mean the expansion is a sure thing. 

The engineer's survey and plans will be reviewed and then help aldermen decide in November if they vote to move forward on applying for the construction grant from the St. Louis County Municipal Parks Commission.

"We have the planning grant and the next one will be the construction grant," Mange tells Patch. He said the construction grant will be for about 95 percent of the project's total construction cost, which is estimated to be around $85,000. 

However, prior to that November decision to apply for the grant, there are many questions that aldermen still want answered, including which of the two current entrances to the park will become and entrance and which one will become the exit.

"We really need to have the engineering drawings in front of us and then we decide," Mange said.

Aldermen also hope the engineering study will clarify if there truly is a need for the parking lot to have additional spaces added.

Mange believes there is a need for the expansion and cites parking overflow issues at the park.

Parking was studied from April 20 to June 14 and Mange said there were parking overflow issues on 42 to 43 percent of those days.

"I think it's pretty clear that we have a substantial number of days that we have a parking challenge there," Mange told aldermen.

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