The giant tent at the Ecker Hill park-and-ride? That’s the High Valley Transit District headquarters. District leaders say the tent isn’t working for their needs and at least five of the vehicles seem to agree, reportedly having trouble starting when the temperature is below 10 degrees.
The district’s future home is planned for the U.S. 40 corridor near Home Depot on 8 acres now owned by Summit County. And the process is moving fast, with the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission expected to take up a plat amendment for the land in early February.
But the district’s Board of Trustees only recently heard a cost estimate for the facility, and it raised some eyebrows, including from Trustee Chris Robinson, who is also the chair of the Summit County Council.
“The speed with which we've gone from being naive about what we were going to spend to where we are today and the orders of magnitude of it are startling,” Robinson said. “That's all I'm trying to point out, is that we’re dealing with a different order of magnitude than I was anticipating, right or wrong.”
According to an estimate from a contractor hired to design the facility, the project is expected to cost $21.8 million, not including the land.
The buildings are planned to house the district’s buses, as well as maintenance facilities, offices and charging and fuel stations.
The Board of Trustees met Thursday and supported a $1.2 million contract change to create more specific architectural designs. The district is funded largely through sales taxes and had millions in savings when it launched its standalone transit services in July.
Caroline Rodriguez, the district’s executive director, said the district would apply for federal grants to help offset the cost of the facilities, though federal funding would not cover the cost of the land.
“I think, given our need, there is a high likelihood that High Valley Transit would get a grant above another entity because we quite literally have nowhere to charge vehicles and nowhere to do maintenance. And need is generally part of the calculation for capital grants,” Rodriguez said.
Robinson said the speed of the process seemed risky to him. He is a land developer and said his general rule is to “measure twice and cut once” when it comes to advising an architect to produce detailed plans. That’s the step the district is pursuing now, and one that Rodriguez and others said was necessary to receive the grants they will soon seek.
But Robinson questioned the degree to which the plans had been vetted.
“I still haven't recovered from the notion that we're going to spend, you know, $25 million on these facilities. It’s stretching my credulity as to whether that is really what's necessary,” he said. “But we don't have time to further discuss it now. And you need to get going on the building, the two that you need immediately. And we'll have another opportunity to talk about it, I'm sure.”
Rodriguez said the district hoped to break ground on the project in three or four months.
