The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â
Courtesy image
The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â
Courtesy image
The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â
The city — which has wanted to build a bus transfer station for years — is again applying for a federal grant and has identified a new potential location: the County-City Building parking lot at Ninth and K streets.
In a scramble to meet a grant application deadline, Lincoln Transportation and Utilities officials appealed to the Lancaster County Board to give them the go-ahead to include the parking lot, which is co-owned by the city and county, as a potential site.
“This is very conceptual,†LTU Director Liz Elliott told the board Thursday. “Nothing is written in stone. We’re asking to propose this as an option in the grant application.â€
It was also urgent that she get an answer Thursday, when she appeared before the commissioners.
“The deadline is today, so we are scrambling to put together a grant and reflect a new location,†she told the board.
LTU officials had been working on an application for a federal RAISE grant administered by the federal Department of Transportation, but found out in the last 45 days that the site they’d been considering — on the southern half of the block between Ninth, 10th, M and N streets, where the former police station now known as the 233 Building sits — wasn’t going to work.
Several problems with the site arose, Elliott said. For one thing, they learned the old art deco building could be eligible as a historic site. Then they learned it could have asbestos, and that old gas tanks are buried beneath the site, which was a gas station in the 1920s.
They might have been able to deal with one of those issues, Elliott said, but all three were daunting.
So they went back and looked at several other possible sites they’d identified and decided the parking lot held the best potential.
Among the benefits: it’s close to security (the sheriff’s office is located in the County-City Building across K Street), it could include space for StarTran administrative offices, and would increase parking spaces for the County-City Building, said Mike Davis, the StarTran transit manager.
The conceptual design would include a parking structure built over the transfer station, increasing existing parking from 475 spaces to 600-700, Davis said. The Public Building Commission would continue to manage parking. LTU officials suggested that non-voter-approved bonds called certificates of participation could be used to pay off the current bonds used to build the lot and pay for the new parking, Davis said.
County Board members told LTU officials they’d give their nod of approval to include the site as a potential location and write a letter to that effect that could be included in the grant application — with the assurance that the plans could be modified if necessary. The Public Building Commission did the same.
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The grant would be for $24.6 million and would require a local match of $8.3 million — the value of the land.
This is the eighth time LTU officials have applied for a highly competitive federal transportation grant, and although they score high in the application process, they haven’t been successful yet, Elliott said.
The city has wanted to build a transfer station for years. It was identified as a need in three studies dating back to 2004 and is part of the 2050 long-range transportation plan and the downtown master plan.
The transfer station is now on the east and south sides of the old Gold’s Building at 11th and N streets and lacks basic amenities such as bathrooms and indoor spaces and is only big enough for six buses, Davis said. Loitering and trash have been consistent problems.
Earlier grant applications envisioned a $28 million transportation center on the block bounded by Ninth, 10th, N and M streets, but later the city reapplied with a scaled-down plan on the southern half of the block.
The last application included the prospect of $500,000 in tax-increment financing the city earmarked as part of redevelopment plans for the Gold’s Building. The money would have been used for demolition of the old police station.
That redevelopment fell through and the city didn’t get the grant, but Elliott said officials are hopeful this time will be successful.
There’s a few positive signs. For one thing, the recently passed federal bipartisan infrastructure bill added money to the grant program, which will now award $775 million, and the grants this time include $113.5 million awarded for planning purposes.
Elliott said officials expect to learn whether they get the grant within three months.
“It’s not a long wait,†she said. “But long enough to keep us all on the edge of our seats.â€
The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â
The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â
The city shared this conceptual design of a bus transfer station it plans to build where the County-City Building parking lot sits at Ninth and K streets.Â