This site on Governors Avenue will be the home of a parking garage planned for Downtown Dover.

DOVER, Del.- Plans to construct a parking garage in downtown Dover will not be moving forward, city officials confirmed on Tuesday.

City Manager Donna Mitchell said a request for proposals to build a garage off Governors Avenue yielded a pair of tentative plans from a pair of developers but neither will be acted upon.

"Right now the parking garage is not a solution," she said.

One of the submissions, Mitchell said, was incomplete and the other one would have seen the developer of the garage charge a daily rate of $12.50 as part of an effort to recoup the cost of constructing a parking garage.

"It's too cost-prohibitive. We don't have the population downtown or the business or any of the draw that we would need to fill the garage," she said.

As part of the RFP, Dover was requesting a developer construct and finance the project without using city tax dollars. The builder would then be allowed to operate and collect revenue from the garage and on street parking in downtown areas.

Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen, a chief proponent of building a parking garage downtown, said he remained optimistic the city could revisit the issue.

The state also allocated $1 million to the city in 2018 to build the garage, though it is unclear what the fate of those funds will be now that the city has shelved its parking garage plan.