Barrington seeks another grant to help fund garage

The village of Barrington is hoping federal funding will help pay for the majority of a proposed commuter parking garage downtown.

On Monday, village trustees approved a resolution asking for $8.3 million in federal grant money. The funds would come through the Congestion Mitigation Air Quality, or CMAQ, grant program.

When finished, the new parking deck, planned for the east end of the current commuter parking lot, along with a new access road out of the lot, is expected to cost about $14 million.

The new parking deck would add 350 parking spaces to the lots, making for a total of 600 spaces.

Besides the $8.3 million it is hoping to get from the CMAQ program, the village has already received a commitment of $2.5 million for the project from the federal Surface Transportation Program. The village is estimating its share of the project to be about $950,000.

While the additional parking will be nice for commuters and those who travel into the downtown area, village manager Denise Pieroni said the highlight will be the new access road.

"The real benefit is that we are going to create an access with a (traffic light) onto Northwest Highway," she said.

Ideally Pieroni said that would ease a lot of the traffic congestion leaving the commuter lot onto Lake Cook Road.

Construction on the project had initially been planned for 2009. However, Pieroni said it is looking more and more like 2010 is a realistic start date.

"We are holding out hope though," Pieroni said of construction starting next year.

Also on Monday, the board of trustees announced that it will formally review plans for a new Walgreen's Pharmacy at 189 W. Northwest Hwy. at its Feb. 11 meeting.

The project calls for redeveloping the existing Ace Hardware site on Northwest Highway into the pharmacy, which would include drive-through facilities.

Barrington's plan commission unanimously approved the project at its Jan. 8 meeting.