In the continuing saga to identify a temporary bus transfer station to make way for the demolition of the southern portion of the Gold’s Building, we finally have an answer.
The StarTran hub will be on South 11th Street. Note that doesn’t say "along" South 11th Street.
After months of negotiation with the owner of a nearby property failed — eliminating the option city officials had been hoping for — the Gold's developers agreed to pour concrete on the westernmost lane of South 11th Street to create a temporary transfer station, said Liz Elliott, director of Lincoln Transportation and Utilities.
The city will add three or four temporary shelters there. The bus stops that the city already moved across N Street in front of the Latitude apartment building will remain.
Elliott said the temporary platform — which officials hope to have ready by Monday — will move riders waiting for their bus far enough from the Gold's Building that the demolition won’t put them in harm’s way.
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The portion of the demolition that impacts the transfer station is expected to take about five months — though weather could impact that timeline. After that, the transfer station will move back to the sidewalk along 11th Street.
Bus schedules won't be affected. Traffic will, however, be reduced to one lane on 11th Street between O and N streets.
Eventually, riders will have a new $32.2 million bus transfer station on the block at Ninth and K streets where the County-City Building parking lot sits, after the city got a long-sought $23.6 million federal grant.
But that won't be done until 2025, and in the meantime, redevelopment of the six-story northern portion of the old Gold’s Department Store into a hotel and retail or restaurant space will be well underway. For that renovation to proceed, the four-story addition on the southern end of the original building along N Street needs to be demolished.
And bus riders will now wait in the west lane of 11th Street for their rides.
Researching a new water source
About 60 people showed up to a recent open house to learn more about the city’s efforts to find a second water source.
Although Lincoln will have an adequate water supply for the next 25 years, the city hired Olsson and created a 27-member advisory council to make a recommendation on a second source in a major step in a process that will take 15-20 years to complete and cost millions.
Initially, it appeared the city was looking at two primary options: creating a link to the Metropolitan Utilities District’s connection to the Missouri River near Omaha or building a direct connection to the Missouri.
What those attending the open house learned is that the advisory council had Olsson look at all the possibilities — not just the two initially identified by the city.
The consultants identified 14 options, but the advisory council quickly eliminated seven of them because they couldn’t provide the quantity or water quality needed, said Donna Garden, Lincoln Transportation and Utilities assistant director.
The options eliminated included getting water from the High Plains (Ogallala) aquifer, a Schuyler wellfield, the Dakota formation, the Paleo Valley aquifer, the Loup River and Elkhorn River wellfields and surface water reservoirs along those rivers.
That leaves seven options for the advisory council to evaluate, four of which involve the Missouri River.
Two of the options encompass digging wellfields in the Missouri River and either pumping water to Lincoln's existing water facilities in Ashland to be treated, or treating it at the Missouri River wellfield and pumping it directly to Lincoln.
The other two Missouri River options involve using surface water with the same two delivery options as the wellfields.
Using surface water would be new for Lincoln — now the city’s water comes from Platte River wellfields near Ashland, where the water is treated before being pumped to Lincoln.
Using surface water would require a different treatment process than the one used for groundwater, so modifications at the Ashland treatment plant would be necessary, Garden said.
One advantage to treating the water — whether surface or groundwater — at the Missouri River site rather than sending it to the treatment plant in Ashland first is that the wells could potentially serve other communities, she said.
The other options the advisory council is evaluating is connecting to the Metropolitan Utilities District, expanding Lincoln's existing wellfields along the Platte River south of Interstate 80 and creating a reservoir, Garden said.
The latter would involve building a lake where well water would be pumped during the winter to use during the summer, she said.
It seems unlikely for the advisory council to decide on expanding the existing wellfields, since the 2019 floods that knocked out power to Lincoln’s wellfields near Ashland and threatened the water supply prompted the city to accelerate its efforts to secure a second water source.
“Reliability is one of the most important things in this,†Garden said, and expanding the existing wellfields wouldn’t score high on those counts.
The advisory council is evaluating each of the seven options based on reliability, governance, life cycle cost, operations, implementation, environmental stewardship and stakeholder impacts.
Each council member will rank the options based on each of the factors, Garden said.
City officials expect the advisory council to finish that process by the first quarter of 2023, and they’ll make a recommendation to the mayor and City Council. Once those two weigh in on the recommendation, the site must be validated by Olsson, a one- to two-year process.
City officials estimated establishing a second water source would cost $350 million to $750 million — though those cost estimates are about five years old now so would likely be more.
A positive of the pandemic
In recent years, the number of people walking through the doors — and the metal detector — at the Hall of Justice has declined considerably.
Lancaster County Sheriff’s Capt. Jerry Witte attributes that to the pandemic, which not only shut down a number of government services but prompted a much broader practice of conducting court hearings via video rather than having defendants appear in court.
That practice has continued as the pandemic has eased.
So far this year, the Hall of Justice has had 193,068 visitors. In 2017, during the same time period, 341,478 visitors walked through the building’s doors, Witte said.
“COVID changed everything,†he said. “Our business has changed dramatically in the last three years and not all of it’s bad. Some of it’s good — more efficient, more cost-effective.â€
One of the big savings is not having to transport prisoners facing criminal charges from Department of Corrections facilities in Lincoln or other communities such as Tecumseh and York for every court appearance, he said.
Because family members can also link to the video hearings, fewer family members walk through the doors, he said.
That means the Hall of Justice security team can better allocate its resources, providing more security directly in the courtrooms in higher-profile and serious cases, he said.