City Hall gives up on site for new Cedar Rapids bus depot

CEDAR RAPIDS - An old idea is looking better than a new one even if it means giving up on $8 million in federal funds.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said Friday that the city is likely to close the book on a decade-old, oft-changed plan to build a new Intermodal Transit Facility and, instead, return the city's bus operation to its pre-flood home, The Ground Transportation Center.

Pomeranz said moving the city transit operation back to the vacant, flood-damaged GTC bus depot at First Street SE and Fourth Avenue SE may be the best option the city can afford.

What is certain, Pomeranz said, is that the city cannot afford to follow through on the existing plan to build the Intermodal Transit Facility between Fifth and Sixth avenues SE and Fifth and Sixth streets SE on property now owned by PepsiAmericas.

The PepsiAmericas site, which was selected by the City Council in 2009 as the new home for the new transit facility, always came with a challenge because PepsiAmericas told the city it would need to buy all 2.4 blocks of the PepsiAmericas' property just off the downtown even if the transit facility needed only a block of property.

As recently as May 2010, the City Council voted not to return the bus depot to the Ground Transportation Center site, where it had been since 1983 until the 2008 flood drove it out. The council also continued to back the purchase of the PepsiAmericas site so part of it could be used for the new transit facility.

In the meantime, the city has been negotiating with PepsiAmericas on what Pomeranz on Friday called a $10-million plan in which the city would buy the PepsiAmericas property, relocate the company to another site on the periphery of the city and provide incentives for the new building. The negotiation is now over.

“That site is being taken out of consideration due to the cost,” Pomeranz said. “Acquiring the Pepsi site, moving Pepsi and constructing their facility is just not something we can't afford right now.”

He applauded PepsiAmericas for its willingness to negotiate on the site proposal, “but the cost of it is just too high,” the city manager said.

Pomeranz noted the city's projected cost of $10 million to put the transit facility on a part of the site would require the city to return another $3 million to the Federal Transportation Administration that the federal agency invested in the construction of Ground Transportation Center with the requirement that the city occupy the building for a certain number of years.

Moving the bus depot back to the Ground Transportation Center would mean the city would not spend millions required of the PepsiAmericas site and would not need to return $3 million to the federal transportation agency. At the same time, though, the city would have to cut loose an $8-million grant it obtained a decade ago to build a new intermodal facility, the city manager said. On the other hand, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide disaster funds to help renovate the transit facility's old, flood-damaged home, the city manager said.

It was back in October 2006, that City Council member Pat Shey first raised the question that it didn't make any sense to build a new Intermodal Transit Facility on the site where the city had decided then to put it - in the 600 block of Second Street SE, just a couple blocks from the existing Ground Transportation Center bus depot, which was slated to remain in operation.

By September of 2007, the council decided to look for a new site on which to build the Intermodal facility and along the way also decided to put the city's bus operation into the new facility and close the Ground Transportation Center depot.

The GTC depot, which is designed in a way to require buses to back out of parking slots, was seen as a hazard to public safety and as an impediment to the city's plans to turn First Street SE along the river into a pedestrian-friendly street.

The June 2008 flood forced the bus depot into temporary buildings on a city parking lot at Second Street SE and 12th Avenue SE as the City Council worked to find a new site for the new transit facility. At one point, the council chose a site at 900 Third Street SE, but federal transit officials rejected it because of flood risk. The Pepsi site emerged in 2009, and by October 2009, then-City Manager Jim Prosser noted that a new city city-county government complex, which was under consideration by some on the council at the time, might also be located on Pepsi's 2.4-block site.

On Friday, City Council member Chuck Swore, a member of the city's Development Committee, said the committee has asked city staff members to come back to the committee later this month with ideas of how to improve the way buses and pedestrians access the Ground Transportation Center depot. One idea is to turn Fourth and Fifth avenues SE at the depot into two-way streets, Swore said.

“We can't afford the Pepsi site,” Swore said. “And if, in fact, we can realign the existing (GTC) site, that certainly is going to be an option.”

Pomeranz said the council committee also is looking at an option to build a new transit facility in the city-owned parking lot across Eighth Avenue SE from the new courthouse, but neither he nor Swore thought that would happen.

Pomeranz said the Ground Transportation Center depot remains at risk of flooding, but he said it's a sturdy building that can still be used. Some non-profit groups have asked the city about using the building if the city does not, he said.

Building the Intermodal Transit Facility has been an elusive task ever since the city secured some $8 million in federal funding for the project a decade ago.

Initially, it was to be built across from the Five Seasons Hotel on First Avenue SE before the city decided to move the site to the 600 block of Second Street SE. The project had included a 500-space parking ramp at those two sites, but the parking ramp since has been dropped from the project.