The proposed 68-foot height of the garage, whose brick and stone façade would resemble Mega’s Veterans office building that is located immediately to the west of the site. The garage is intended to serve prospective new tenants in the 10-story Veterans building and to help spur other development in the commercial district by offering parking for workers and shoppers at other businesses.

In addition, some spaces in the garage, which would charge hourly and daily rates, would be reserved for commuters who drive to the Jefferson Park CTA and Metra stations, 4917 N. Milwaukee Ave. There also are plans to make the garage available for concertgoers at the 1,900-seat theater inside the Copernicus Cultural and Civic Center, 5216 W. Lawrence Ave.

“This garage would officer a solution to a regional problem,” project attorney Endy Zemenides said. Plans to build a new medical office building in the 5200 block of Lawrence several years ago failed due to a lack of parking in the area, and the City Colleges of Chicago decided not to open offices if the business district due to a lack of parking, he said.

Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce president Gregg Kobelinski said that the project would not only address the parking needs of area businesses but would be an important beautification improvement for the shopping area. “It will add something to that corner,” he said. Currently the site is used as an unimproved surface lot for up to about 40 cars.

City planners have said that the 25,057-square-foot parcel is ideal for a large garage because it backs up to a railroad embankment, which is adjacent to the Kennedy Expressway. The city’s zoning ordinance calls for new parking structures to be constructed behind a building or in other remote areas so that they do not break up the pedestrian feel of a shopping district along main thoroughfares.

Members of the chamber, the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association and the Copernicus Foundation voiced support for the project after Mega recently presented the revised proposal to representatives from their boards. While the planned 299 parking spaces remains unchanged from last year’s proposal, the height was lowered from 78 feet to 68 feet due to several design changes, including the removal of the roof over the top parking level.

Association president Merril Miller said that from the community’s perspective, an important selling point of the revised proposal is that the garage would be no more than half the height of Veterans Square, which association members have complained detracts from the neighborhood atmosphere of the shopping district. The Veterans site was rezoned to accommodate an office tower in 1979, about 5 years before Mega purchased the property.

In the past, association officials have said that new construction in the business district should be limited to 50 feet, especially for those parcels which are located next to homes. Echoing the community’s concerns, the city has called for any redevelopment project for a city-owned vacant parcel at 5201 W. Lawrence Ave. to be constructed under the site’s existing B3-2 zoning, which has a 50-foot height maximum.

According to project officials, the construction of the garage would not be economically feasible if the number of parking decks were reduced in order to lower the project’s height. In recent years, the city has created new standards for garages, including wider aisles and nicer facades that increase costs for builders, Zemenides said.

The association has expressed concern that the proposed B3-5 zoning for the parking project would encourage developers for nearby sites to seek the same zoning classification, which permits up to 80-foot-tall structures. Miller said that the association may look into the possibility that the site could be downzoned after the garage were to be built.

Currently the former Cowhey site is zoned M1-1, which is intended primarily for manufacturing uses but also permits some retail uses, including restaurants. Under M1-1, there is no height maximum, but no structure larger than about 30,000 square feet could be built on the triangular-shaped parcel, whose address is 4849 N. Lipps Ave.

The only entrance and exit to the garage would be located on Lipps, and the first floor would include 10,914 square feet of retail space. Miller has asked Mega to look into the possibility of a sign being installed which would prohibit left turns from southbound Lipps to eastbound Ainslie in an effort to improve pedestrian safety and to curtail the amount of traffic on area side streets. Currently there is a four-way stop at the intersection, which is located less than a block from the CTA terminal.