MANKATO — A new $93 million downtown hotel complex will have one of the city center’s least stylish structures as a next-door neighbor — Mankato’s oldest municipal parking garage.
Thinking that the 55-year-old Civic Center Ramp might look especially homely next to the new 10-story AC Hotel by Marriott and adjoining Element by Westin hotel, the City Council has agreed to set aside funds over the next two years for a potential $1.4 million makeover of the parking structure.
Council member Jessica Hatanpa focused her colleagues’ attention on the potential juxtaposition after the hotel project, one of the biggest private downtown investments in Mankato history, opens late in 2026 or early in 2027.
“And we’re going to have the attached parking ramp look like it’s a war zone?” Hatanpa said.
The six-story ramp, totaling 443 parking stalls is the most elderly of the remaining ramps built in the 1970s as part of the downtown urban renewal effort that closed portions of Front Street to create the Mankato Mall as well as the Holiday Inn, which is now being demolished to make room for the Element by Westin.
At the time, parking garage architecture was entirely utilitarian and resulted in imposing concrete ramps with virtually no adornments. Since then, two of those ramps were demolished (one on Second Street in the early 2000s and another on Broad Street in 2022). The largest of the municipal parking structures — the 634-stall Mankato Place Ramp built in 1972 — was improved following the construction of the adjacent Hilton Garden Inn in 2007.
The Mankato Place Ramp, which included reserved parking spaces for Hilton guests, received new glass-walled staircases on each end of the garage, a new elevator on the hotel side and columns of brick on the exterior that matched the hotel.
With no immediate source for the substantial fix-up funds required to similarly modernize the Civic Center Ramp’s appearance, Administrative Services Director Parker Skophammer came up with a couple of possibilities — both of which would tap into surplus collections from the half-percent local sales tax.
The city typically budgets conservatively for sales tax collections — setting revenue projections at least 15% below what would likely be collected if the economy rolls along according to expectations. That cushion is important in the event of a sudden economic downturn, which can cause consumer spending to plunge and sales tax collections to dive a corresponding amount.
But in normal economic times, the conservative budgeting results in a year-end surplus in the sales tax line-item, what Skophammer calls an “overage.” In recent years, the city’s practice is to set aside half of the annual overage in a fund that aims to ensure there’s money available for the hefty cost of maintaining municipal recreation facilities, such as the eventual replacement of artificial turf at city ballfields.
Skophammer’s suggestion for financing a ramp improvement project is to use the other half of the sales-tax overage. Half of the 2024 sales-tax surplus should be at least $700,000 — more than enough to cover the $400,000 estimated cost of a thorough repainting of the Civic Center Ramp.
To add brick-facade columns to match what was done farther down Riverfront Drive at the Mankato Place Ramp would push up the total cost by another $1 million.
That more comprehensive $1.4 million project could be accomplished if $700,000 from the 2024 sales tax overage is set aside and doubled with the excess 2025 sales tax proceeds, assuming consumer spending continues at healthy levels over the next 11 months.
The collections were running strong when the latest figures, covering the period through October, were provided to the city by the state Department of Revenue. They indicated the city will hit $7.2 million or more for 2024, once again providing that 15-20% cushion above what was budgeted, Skophammer said.
Council members liked the idea of accumulating two years’ worth of funding and undertaking a more comprehensive ramp-improvement project, although a final decision to move ahead with the work won’t come until later.
Hatanpa noted that the hotel development is large enough and complex enough that it won’t be done until the very end of 2026 anyway, giving the city time to plan and complete the ramp makeover.
Although the hotel project provided a sense of urgency, the work on the Civic Center Ramp isn’t entirely about dressing it up on behalf of its new neighbor.
The potential improvements had been under discussion well before the Marriott-Westin development was announced in 2024 because the old ramp looked increasingly out of place amid upgrades made elsewhere in the city center.
“It aligns with the strategic plan, both in terms of streetscapes and investing in the aesthetics of downtown,” Skophammer said.
As for the timing of the investment, Skophammer said staff might advise waiting until the sales tax dollars are in hand.
“That’s something we’ll evaluate at the end of 2025,” he said.