Melissa Lewis Anderson Independent-Mail

The rendering of a conceptual plan for a pedestrian connection from the parking deck to the center of downtown.

ANDERSON — The parking spaces will be the first things to open up for use in the parking deck complex that includes some retail space in downtown Anderson.

City officials said the project is on schedule, with the parking deck itself set to open in January 2009. Once completed, the multi-level parking deck will add between 238 to 250 parking spaces to downtown Anderson. Thirty-eight of those spaces will be reserved for The Chiquola Condominiums, Anderson Assistant City Manager Linda McConnell said.

It is those parking spaces that motorists have watched go up first.

“With those pre-cast panels, the parking deck went up quickly,” Anderson Mayor Terence Roberts said. “But now, they are getting to the details.”

The pre-cast panels have been erected in about two months. But there was a lot of preparation work before that. And now, there will be several months more of work before the parking deck is completed, McConnell said.

“The amount of work that went on underground took almost as long as it did to put the pre-cast panels, above ground, in place,” McConnell said.

McCoy Construction of Charleston was awarded the contract. The whole project — land acquisition, engineering, design and construction — is costing $8 million.

The site was cleared around the end of 2007 and construction on the piers, which are main supports for the parking deck, started in March, McConnell said.

Now, it is up to the city officials, including the council, to decide on the details of the parking deck: Whether it will have compact-vehicle spaces, a place for people to park their bicycles and how much the fees will be for those using the parking deck.

McConnell said the parking deck will not have a parking attendant or automated gate, but likely parking meters.

As for the retail space, McConnell said, that will take a bit longer to finish. She said the 10,000-square-foot retail space still belongs to local attorney Richard McClellion. The council agreed to $750,000-worth of improvement to the retail space, in exchange for use of the land to build the parking deck on.

McClellion will then handle the leasing and marketing of those spaces, which could include up to five tenants, McConnell said.