Downtown Rome Parking Manager Becky Smyth said the new parking lot at Third Avenue and Broad Street has been landscaped and should be ready for parking within a couple of days.

Smyth made her report during Tuesday’s meeting of the city’s Community Development Committee.

She also told the committee that work on the Midtown Transit Station parking lot, adjacent to First Presbyterian Church between East First Street and Second Street, should be complete within 30 days, bringing that lot back online.

South Rome Redevelopment Director Melissa Jones briefed the committee on plans to work with a developer on tax-credit single-family housing in South Rome. Jones said the agency has narrowed the field of potential developers to two and that a decision is expected to be made at the Feb. 19 South Rome Redevelopment Agency meeting.

The agency has already retained a consultant to help with a community-needs assessment. The South Rome group has not disclosed which of the properties it owns will be targeted for development.

In other reports — if anyone finds a small pontoon boat floating down the Coosa River, let Rome Environmental Planner Eric Lindberg know.

Lindberg said the old pontoon boat, donated to the city by Dr. Hamilton Dixon more than a decade ago, was pulled loose from the small dock on the Oostanaula River at Ridge Ferry Park during high water last month and hasn't been seen since.

A fuel line to the boat had been cut, Lindberg said, and it couldn’t have been stolen and piloted away from Rome, which is why it had not been taken out of the water for the winter. He said a small dock dislodged by high water several years ago in Rome made it all the way downstream to Weiss Lake in Alabama.

Lindberg also told the committee the Joel Sulzbacher Roman Holiday tour boat has been taken to dry-dock for the winter.

Both of Rome’s relatively new docks — one on the Coosa at Heritage Park, the other on the Oostanaula at Ridge Ferry Park — have survived two prolonged bouts with high water this winter, he said.