Meetings Steering Committee(Folders 1-2)

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Concem has been registered by some of the major businesses in the area about having the transit center in the parkade. There has been a fear that the loitering difficulties that characterize the downtown/courthouse area will transfer to the parkade. The Dishict's awareness of activity at the Courthouse site is high, and we can report with authority that the perpetrators of the social problems around the downtown area are predominantly not transit riders, and are not associated with the transit system. The Courthouse lawn is an attractive, public area, the only such area in the downtown core. The District is firmly resolved: wherever the new transit center might be located, loitering and inappropriate youth behavior does not go with the tenitory. As a governing body, we have authority to enact ordinances that will enable Dish-ict security to maintain a safe public environment; and we are committed to using that authoriry. One of the positive features of the parkade site is that it does not require demolition of existing buildings, or the relocation of any existing businesses. This is an unusual characteristic for a potential conshuction site as near to the downtown core as the parkade is located. Oddfellows Site Having the opportunity to build the transit facility from the ground up would enable a design, engineering, and consriuction process which can specifically target the mitigation of typical transit impacts. Development at this site has the potential to reduce the level of traffic and business impact well below that of the existing Cherriot Station. Buses will be off-sheet, inside a facility that is designed to accommodate them. The site is a particularly desirable one from the standpoint of minimizing economic, traffic, parking, and pedestrian impacts on surrounding businesses. Nearly the entire shucture would face onto blank facades. The opposite side of the street houses a non- commercial land use, the Marion County Courthouse. It is unusual to find a site as centrally-located to the downtown core that has as much potential to develop as a transit facility, with minimal impacts on the surrounding businesses. In terms of parking, development of this site will initially remove 66 off-street parking spaces, and return approximately 50 spaces on-street and another 100 spaces on the second level of the structure. There is potential, using air space, to develop additional levels of parking, adding up to as many as 400 new parking spaces in downtown Salem. The primary negative impact from developing this site would be the loss of a building on the national register of historic shuctures. The Oddfellows Building was listed in 1988. While development of the transit center could include architectural treahnents which might retain the historic design elements of the existing shucture, the original building could not be preserved as part of the transit faciliry: 4