With a $3.66 million payment from the flood control district, Napa now has a substantial down payment on a new parking garage near the Cinedome theater.

A garage is needed to replace parking that the flood project will wipe out and accommodate future commercial and residential development near Main and Pearl streets, officials said.

With the payment by flood control, the city’s redevelopment agency can accelerate planning of a new garage, although construction isn’t likely in this decade.

Cassandra Walker, the city’s redevelopment manager, told the City Council last week that the skate park on Pearl Street is a likely garage site. Much will depend on how development plans on surrounding properties shake out, she said.

The area will be under increasing pressure from private redevelopers, Walker said. The Cinedome site is ripe for a mixed-use project if the movie theater moves to south Napa, she said.

The area around Mervyn’s could also come into play, Walker said. “We have something else that could be happening with Mervyn’s,” she said.

An investment group led by Keith Rogal bought the 77,000-square-foot Mervyn’s complex in February. Although Mervyn’s has a long-term lease, the new owners are exploring the possibility of a more intensive development down the road.

The city will begin work on a Downtown Specific Plan later this year that analyzes downtown’s future. This will include the central business district’s parking needs, Jennifer LaLiberté, the redevelopment agency’s senior project coordinator, said Friday.

Garage construction hinges on many factors. Developers would be expected to pay most of the cost, but until downtown has flood protection, projects that include housing may be impossible, LaLiberté said.

Under the most optimistic federal funding scenario, the area will be vulnerable to river and creek flooding for another five years. If the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to receive reduced allocations, the schedule would be dragged out longer.

The local flood district is required to replace 122 parking spaces near the Cinedome that will be wiped out by the construction of a flood bypass channel.

Originally, the district planned to replace these spaces with a new surface lot at an estimated cost of $12,000 per space. The city and the district later agreed that a surface lot would not be adequate given the area’s development potential, Walker said.

With the city now planning a parking structure, the flood district increased its payment to $30,000 per space, totaling $3.66 million.

This is somewhat less than what today’s costs would be, Walker said. The city-county garage under construction on Fifth Street costs $33,000 per space without factoring in the value of the land, she said.

When all the spaces lost to flood control are calculated, the total will be approximately 169 spaces, Walker said.

Councilmen Mark van Gorder and Peter Mott noted that the flood district’s payment of $3.66 million is about $2 million less than if the district were paying $33,000 for 169 spaces.

The flood district and the city had worked out a fair agreement, Walker said. The district was obligated to replace only 122 spaces. The city wins by getting the $3.66 million now, she said.

The district could have waited years before it turned over money for replacement parking, she said. Had it wanted to, the district might have insisted on building a surface lot across Soscol Avenue on McKinstry Street where costs would be less, she said.

With cash in hand, the city can team up with developers to provide many more spaces in a structure, Walker said.

Councilman Jim Krider said the city is morally obligated to provide a parking structure as soon as possible. As the three-story Main Street West at Main and Clinton streets fills with tenants, parking in the neighborhood will become tighter, he said.

The city has $6 million it can spend on a parking structure. In addition to the $3.66 million from the flood district, Main Street West paid a $1 million parking impact fee and the redevelopment agency has $1.4 million in bond funds to support a mixed-use development, LaLiberté said.

The 484-space city-county garage at Main and Fifth is costing $15 million, occupying land that the county donated.

The city will likely have to buy the land for a garage near the Cinedome and Mervyn’s. A likely site, Walker said, is the city block owned by Napa Sanitation District north of the Cinedome. It is occupied by the skate park, a children’s playground and a deactivated sewage pump station.

The sanitation district is expected to put the property up for sale by the end of the year. Public agencies have the first right to buy, Walker said.

If the skate park is displaced, the city would build a new one, Walker said. The city’s Community Resources Department is looking at possible sites. A new facility would be more challenging than the current skate park which does not meet the expectations of skaters today, she said.