GTA receives $3.6 million

EPHRATA — Grant Transit Authority received $3.6 million in federal stimulus money to build a new operations and maintenance facility in Moses Lake.

GTA purchased 10 acres of land north of Westover Boulevard and Owens Drive near Moses Lake in January, spending $825,779 for the lot.

The roughly $4.8 million new facility includes separate operations and maintenance buildings, parking for up to 35 buses, bus wash and above-ground diesel fuel tank, according to the GTA.

Transit Manager Greg Wright said about $475,000 for the building is coming from a federal earmark and $725,000 is coming from reserves.

“This project was prior to me, of course, the GTA board has been working on this since about 2006. (They) spent a couple of years finalizing a site, getting the (National Environmental Policy Act) work done,” he said. “We were basically thinking, more earmarks, how do we fund this?”

While GTA plans to keep their new space in the Ephrata Amtrak station as a hub, Wright said it’s been a long range goal to have a location to store and service buses. The organization presently contracts for bus storage and maintenance with a Moses Lake company.

“The reason we contract our services out right now, for maintenance and driving for People for People, there was not a need and as we’ve grown we’ve identified this need that we need a facility of our own and we may down the road bring everything in house.”

The contracted provider is moving into the new facility with GTA, Wright said. This allows administrators to have better oversight of the operation.

Wright said he was contacted in December by the Department of Transportation to find projects prepared to start quickly.

“All the systems in the state submitted what they wanted, whether it was capital projects, bus procurement and since we had just procured our property, we basically in a ‘ready to go’ status,” he said.

GTA started hunting for architects in March and received a good response, Wright said. The organization is negotiating with Waterleaf Architecture from Portland, Ore.

“It appears as if we will be having a kick-off meeting for our first phase of design real soon,” he said. “At this point, it’s just Waterleaf and the board, so they come and sit down and we basically say, ‘Here’s what we’re wanting.’”

Wright said initial plans would use about four acres of the lot, and conceptual site plans should be available within a couple weeks.

The design and engineering phase is planned to finish by August. He said GTA is hoping to begin by December.

“This all real approximate dates, but our goal is to turn some dirt in December, January at the latest,” he said.