Annapolis Parking Garage Redevelopment Update Coming Wednesday: What To Know

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Contractors will give an update Wednesday evening on the plan to demolish and rebuild the Noah Hillman Garage in downtown Annapolis. The presentation starts at 5:30 p.m. in Maryland Hall, where masks are required. The city will also post a video of the talk on its YouTube channel.

"The new garage is going to be amazing," officials wrote on a flyer advertising this week's meeting. "[It will have] more parking spaces, better traffic circulation, easier ingress and egress, and smart technologies."

The construction is part of a $56 million effort to floodproof Annapolis and battle rising sea levels. This vision is called "Reimagining City Dock." It is slated to be the biggest infrastructure project in the town's history, and it could require taking on substantial debt.

Along with rebuilding a larger Hillman Garage at 150 Gorman Street, leaders want to redevelop the City Dock Lot into a raised park and convert the nearby Donner Lot into another green space. Annapolis additionally suggested raising the promenade along Ego Alley to be the same height as the existing bulkheads.

This would combat ongoing climate change in one of the city's most vulnerable areas. Last month's inundation showed that susceptibility, bringing Annapolis a 4.9-foot tidal surge during the town's fourth-worst flood on record.

City Dock flooded 65 times in 2019, a February press release said. By 2040, the write-up predicted that the site could flood 350 days each year.

Annapolis also estimated that it will have to spend $45 million on four miles of sea walls by 2040 to limit that inundation. That equates to $1,159 per capita.

"If we are going to take care of our residents and honor our important history as a community, we need to be resilient in the face of climate change," Mayor Gavin Buckley stated in the release. "Mitigating the impacts of climate change is expensive."

These strategies could improve the flooding forecast, but they would decommission plenty of parking spots.

That's where the new five-story Hillman Garage comes in.

With 590 spaces, the new structure is slated to have 165 more spots than the current garage. That would offset the parking losses around City Dock and add 40 to 50 total spaces to Annapolis.

The rebuilding process is scheduled to begin in January 2022. Work will start on the Hillman Garage before moving over to City Dock. The Annapolis revamp should be done within five years.

Officials said all the garages within one mile of Hillman have the baseline capacity to absorb most of the temporarily displaced spots. This does not consider unexpected surges, however.

Annapolis is finalizing its messaging surrounding the initiative, which will require clear communication about parking availability and downtown transportation. This communication will be the focus of Wednesday's meeting led by Dharma Pachner of Contrast & Co.

"The key takeaway: Annapolis is open during the rebuild," Buckley stated in the meeting announcement.

A September City Council work session included a full outline of the construction, which will be handled by a public-private partnership called Annapolis Mobility & Resilience Partners. That discussion is viewable here. Residents can skip to 1:11:55 to see the beginning of the PowerPoint.

More information and sketches are posted at annapoliscitydockproject.com.

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