Spokane Transit Authority has started planning for the construction of a $10.8 million transit vehicle storage building, parking lot, and fuel storage facility, to be located just northwest of its headquarters in west central Spokane. 

Brandon Rapez-Betty, spokesman for the STA, says the project is expected to begin in the summer of 2018 and to be completed the following summer.

ALSC Architects PS, of Spokane, and the Spokane office of Seattle-based Coffman Engineers Inc. are handling the design and engineering work for the project. 

“As early as 2005, we identified the need for additional vehicle fueling, servicing, and bus and van parking space at our Boone location,” Rapez-Betty says. “The facility was justified based on our current service levels, but it is now even more essential with the STA Moving Forward programmed increases in service over the next 10 years.”

Rapez-Betty says the project is being planned for a vacant lot owned by STA, located between Cedar and Adams streets, one block north of Boone. 

A new 68,800-square-foot facility will occupy the southern half of the vacant property north of Sharp Avenue between those two north-south streets, as well as the north half of an existing employee parking lot south of Sharp. He says the city of Spokane has approved STA’s request to vacate a portion of Sharp Avenue that bisects the two sites. 

Rapez-Betty says the facility will be able to accommodate up to 52 buses and will include additional fueling, washing, farebox servicing, and staging operations for regular buses and paratransit vans. 

The facility also will be equipped to recharge electric battery-powered vehicles, such as those that are planned for the Central City Line, which is to be a bus route between Browne’s Addition and Spokane Community College.

The proposed project also will include developing a new 87-stall parking lot on another vacant lot, just northeast of the new facility, at the southwest corner of Sinto Avenue and Jefferson Street.

Rapez-Betty says the project is included in the STA Moving Forward plan, a series of 25 projects that will be funded through a sales tax increase approved by voters last year.