Courtesy of Circus Square Development LLC This rendering shows Centre Park, a condominium development and parking garage that’s slated to be built near the minor league ballpark that’s under construction.

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The commercial and residential space encasing a new downtown parking garage will be developed by restaurant owner Rick Kelley, longtime point man for the 106-acre redevelopment project that includes a baseball stadium now under construction.

The next planned piece is a public parking garage encased in private development on the block between the ballpark, College Street and Seventh and Eighth avenues. That’s to be owned by Circus Square Development LLC, of which Kelley is the sole officer, according to state incorporation records.

Tentative plans for the 821-space garage and its connected development have already passed the City-County Planning Commission and Bowling Green City Commission.

Kelley pushed for recruiting a minor-league baseball team for several years as chairman of Play Ball! ’05. The owner of Mariah’s restaurant - adjacent to much of the planned redevelopment - has been the leading private advocate for the redevelopment plan that proposes selling about $100 million in bonds to draw even more in private investment to the downtown area. Most of the bonds are backed by expected higher tax revenues from within the district resulting from increased property values and new jobs; if at least $200 million has been poured into the area by the end of 2014, the state will hand back enough of the taxes it’s collected in the designated Tax Increment Financing district, or TIF, to repay most of the bonds.

Kelley referred questions on the project to Realtor Tom Baker, who will market the space dubbed “Centre Park.”

Centre Park is expected to cost about $23 million, not including the city parking garage, Baker said.

“None of the private development is paid for with the TIF bonds,” he said. “That is all private financing.”

The garage will be paid for with bond proceeds, Baker said.

The private development includes 36,000 square feet of restaurant space, 25,000 square feet of retail space, 50,000 square feet of professional offices and up to 75,000 square feet of condominiums, he said. Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate will market all of that, Baker said.

Centre Park is expected to offer one-, two- and three-bedroom luxury condominiums, but the final number of units will depend on demand, he said.

“We’ve already had quite a few inquiries, and we don’t even have floor plans finalized yet,” Baker said.

Many of the condos will have a good view of the ballpark, SKyPAC and Circus Square Park, he said. Prices haven’t been set, but they’ll have the latest and most high-tech amenities possible, Baker said.

Baker said he hopes construction could start by the end of October, and while engineering issues and changing plans make the construction timeline uncertain, some units may be ready for sale by late summer 2009. The private development’s design has to be coordinated with final plans for the central parking garage being built by master developer Alliance Corp. of Glasgow, he said.

Baker said he thinks most people don’t yet grasp the magnitude of redevelopment and the extent of change it will bring. He predicts “block after block” of new development to follow.

“This is the new downtown,” Baker said.

BGMU site

Some decision is likely soon about the fate of Bowling Green Municipal Utilities’ headquarters site, a diagonal block or so away from Kelley’s development. Preliminary plans for the redevelopment district show that block between Eighth and Main avenues, Center and Kentucky streets occupied by townhouses around the perimeter of a central parking lot - but whether that happens depends largely on the utility’s board of directors.

BGMU General Manager Mark Iverson said that at the next BGMU board meeting, Sept. 8, an architect will present three alternatives: renovating the current headquarters, building a new headquarters on the same one-block site - not all of which BGMU uses now - or selling the current site and building anew on the triangular lot the utility owns between Eighth Avenue and Kentucky and Adams streets, diagonally across from the current headquarters.

Those alternatives will include a “best guess” of prices for each option, Iverson said. There is a draft contract for the sale of BGMU’s current headquarters site, but the utility has had no serious discussion with developers about sale or construction dates, he said. No one else has shown interest in buying or developing the nearby triangular site, Iverson said.

“We’re not under a particular timetable to have a project either being built or complete, at this stage,” he said.

A term sheet circulated early this month at a Warren County Downtown Economic Development Authority anticipates an $8.46 million bond issue by Warren County to build a new BGMU headquarters. The bonds could be issued before the end of this year, according to the term sheet.

Iverson said the utility has had tentative talks with the authority about that financing. In a typical building project, BGMU would issue its own bonds, but the utility would agree to the county bond issue if the terms are as good as BGMU could get itself, he said.