On Tuesday, the Mobile City Council appropriated $40.5 million in city funds for capital projects around the city, the majority being $34 million for the Mobile Civic Center.

The lion share of the civic center funds was $29 million, which will go to construction of a parking facility on the civic center site. The parking garage will be owned by the city but will be used for both the civic center and for an on-site office building that will be constructed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Jim DeLapp, Mobile’s executive director of public works, says that $29 million is not the final cost of constructing the parking garage: The city will still have to put the project out for bidding and see what contractors estimate the cost will be. The Mobile City Council will also have to approve a contract for construction of the parking garage, he says.

Mobile City Councilmember William Carroll, in whose district the civic center lies, said he was supportive of the efforts to move forward on the parking deck. But he said he wanted to make sure the final design of the garage was in line with the standards outlined in the city’s Downtown Development District guidelines.

“We want it to be a vibrant building that matches the area and adheres to all of the concepts within the [Architectural Review Board] and the DDD, and also form-based codes,” Carroll said. “I would hope that [the corps building and the garage] arrive somewhere close to the same time. Given the number of people working in the corps building, we need parking places to keep them off the street.”