The City of Traverse City, Grand Traverse County, and The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay are collaborating on a potential green redesign of the Governmental Center parking lot and river boardwalk, with state grant funding sought to install bioretention and pervious pavement to reduce pollution runoff into the Boardman River, realign parking spaces through angled parking, and renovate the deteriorating boardwalk to improve accessibility for all users.

The Grand Traverse County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (BRA) agreed Thursday to commit up to $200,000 as a local match for the project. The Watershed Center will apply to the state by a November 5 deadline for a nonpoint source (NPS) pollution grant for additional project funds, with the total price tag potentially nearing $1 million. NPS pollution occurs when pollution doesn’t originate from a single source but from many diffuse sources, such as “runoff from paved surfaces in an urban area,” explained Grand Traverse County Deputy Administrator Chris Forsyth.

At the Governmental Center, rain running across the parking lot picks up dirt, oil, gasoline, and other pollutants and dumps into a parking lot storm drain, which empties directly into the Boardman River and eventually Grand Traverse Bay. There is no treatment of that stormwater before it enters the river, said Traverse City Planning Director Shawn Winter. With a green redesign of the parking lot, “the way it would be designed is it’d be taking the water and treating it through infiltration through the soil so it wouldn’t be going directly in the drain,” Winter said.

The project calls for adding green infrastructure in two parking lot locations, including installing bioretention systems in the south section and replacing some impervious material with pervious pavers in the north section. While impervious surfaces are hard and produce runoff because water can’t permeate them, pervious surfaces allow water to percolate through to the ground underneath and be filtered by the soil. “We’re reducing the amount of impervious pavement (in the lot),” Winter said.

As part of the project, soil borings will first be taken in the Governmental Center parking lot – a process that has already started – to look for any existing soil contamination to ensure reconstruction doesn’t inadvertently expose more pollutants. BRA Director Anne Jamieson-Urena said state grant requirements require proof that there’s no existing underground contamination; if contamination is found, staff would “engineer around that and relocate” any infrastructure to ensure those areas aren’t disturbed, she said.

While the parking lot would remain the same size, Winter said the project could add approximately 20 spaces at the Governmental Center by converting spaces to 90-degree angled parking. In response to feedback from BRA board members about making the lot safer and more inviting for visitors trying to cross and access the Governmental Center, Winter agreed and said the lot would “feel a little different” than its existing configuration. That would include better defined areas for events like trick-or-treating or protests, he said. The project also calls for significant improvements to the river boardwalk, which is “in much need of some work,” Forsyth said. Plans call for a retaining wall and ADA improvements to make the river more accessible to all users.

Both Forysth and Winter said they hoped the project would serve as a model for other community projects. “We know both at the city and the county that stormwater management, these types of issues, are a problem countywide,” said Forsyth. “(Pollutants are) getting into our watershed, they're affecting our water quality.” Forsyth said redesigning the Governmental Center parking lot with green infrastructure could be a “demonstration project for the greater community to say, ‘Look, this is a way to address problems from a public infrastructure standpoint’ that other local units of governments could look at.”

Winter agreed, noting that because so many municipal parking lots were built in the past, most don’t meet the city’s own recently adopted stormwater ordinance. “The city and many of our townships have stormwater ordinances to regulate stormwater runoff,” he said. “We're currently at this facility not meeting our own standards. So we kind of want to lead by example and show like OK, at the very least private developments, this is how you can mitigate stormwater on-site instead of just dumping it into the storm drains.”

City Commissioner Tim Werner, who sits on the BRA board, was the sole ‘no’ vote in the board’s 4-1 vote to provide a funding match for the project. Werner said he was skeptical of vague aspirations to clean up pollution without clear measurables in place to gauge the project’s effectiveness. “We’re not trying to remediate something, which is typically what this body is involved in, so this is future pollution that we’re anticipating,” he said. “We’re acknowledging that we’re going to have future pollution, and the community’s going to pay for it for the folks that park their vehicles out there.” Werner questioned whether there are better ways to address runoff pollution, such as cutting the size of the parking lot in half or charging for parking and using those funds to make improvements. “I'm all for green infrastructure and treating stormwater...but what's the goal of this project as far as pollution?” he said. “I just don't see anything here yet.”

Staff said stormwater runoff was a known problem and that demand for Governmental Center parking lot is already high and likely to increase with the construction of two new buildings across the street at the Boardman and Eighth Street intersection, including the new Commongrounds cooperative. “We anticipate that our parking lot is going to be in demand by customers and users of those two buildings,” Forsyth said, adding that the Governmental Center would likely see more demand “on the weekend and maybe even during the week.” Winter also noted that the state grant requires pre- and post-monitoring of site conditions, so data will be available to measure the project’s effectiveness. County Commissioner Ron Clous, who sits on the BRA board, pointed out the Governmental Center parking lot will require improvements with or without green infrastructure. “If we can get help funding it and have a nicer parking lot than just repaving what’s there, then I’m in favor of that,” he said.

According to a timeline provided by staff, the project partners should know by next summer whether the state has approved NPS grant funding for the project. If the grant application is successful, environmental investigation and engineering would take place over the winter of 2023. Construction bids would be sought in the winter of 2024, with the actual parking lot reconstruction slated for summer 2024.