Intercity Transit maintenance building renovation starts this March

Intercity Transit is set to start the renovation of the maintenance buildings in its headquarters at Pattison Street this March.

The agency's governing body authorized General Manager Ann Freeman-Manzanares to have the Department of Enterprise Services (DES) allocate $39,408,367 to the funding of the project Wednesday, January 1.

Forma Construction, which Intercity Transit has already been working with for other construction projects in their headquarters, would oversee the renovation, providing more space for the five departments in the maintenance building.

Eric Wood, project manager for Stantec, which designed the rehabilitation of the entire headquarters, said that the building would continue to house the automotive shop, coach area, and inventory area.

Wood added that the automotive shop would now have six work bays  in total, instead of just two, while the coach area would now have seven work bays as an upgrade from just five.

The facilities department and the fuel and wash area would be transferred to a dedicated building completed in 2022. A detailing department was also added to the new building.

Part of the project also includes demolishing the old administration building to make space for 168 parking slots and constructing a bus canopy east of the maintenance building.

Alex Chicano, project manager at Forma, explained that the project would be executed in four phases. The initial phase would be to install underground infrastructure, such as an electrical pathway.

Trenches would also be dug from the utility yard north of the maintenance building westwards to the Pattison exit where the new transformer from Puget Sound Energy would be transferred , which is set to be completed by June 2023.

Once the old administration building has been removed, Forma would prioritize the construction of the new parking lot. They would also construct two infiltration galleries towards Pattison Street and retaining walls to separate elevation changes where the administration building used to be. The period for this phase would run from May to December 2023.

By September 2024, a third infiltration gallery would have also been built, near it will be a metal structure that would temporarily house the maintenance staff.

Chicano acknowledged that this is one of the more difficult aspects of the construction as Intercity Transit employees would continue working on the site.

“It's a different challenge to build while the owner is occupying, but it's definitely something we're really looking forward to,” Chicano said.

Forma would transform the temporary structure into a bus canopy after the last phase of the project, which is the actual remodeling of the maintenance building. The last phase would take about a year and is expected to be completed by October 2025.

The renovation of the maintenance building is part of the expansion and rehabilitation of the entire headquarters of Intercity Transit. As part of the bigger project, Forma replaced underground storage tanks and constructed a fueling station in 2018 and a new administration and operations building in 2022.