People may have gotten used to seeing its neon green sheeting this summer, but that will soon be covered as Stevens Point’s new $5 million transit facility nears completion on the city’s southeast side.
The 35,000-square-foot building at 2700 Week St., across Brilowski Road from the Portage County Business Park just north of Land’s End, should be completed and ready for occupancy by the second week in January. Ellis Stone is the lead contractor on the project.
Joel Lemke, the city’s director of public utilities and transportation, said he expects Transit staff and vehicles to make the leap from the municipal garage in Bukolt Park to the new facility by the third week January. No service interruptions are anticipated during the change over, he said.
Lemke said the building will be “miles better” than the current one, which had become too small to accommodate the vehicles, mechanics and administrative personnel and functions of the city’s 11-bus fixed route and paratransit fleet.
“Right now we stack buses to even get the ones that we actively use inside, so we need to dig them out when we need to get at them… they’re in there like cordwood. The mechanic facility is small, at most two vehicles with anything going on at one time is all you can have before you’re actually in the way of the rest of the operation, and the office facility is quite inadequate… you have three people that are essentially working off of the same desk,” said Lemke. “(The new facility) is an incredible, yeah, just a ton better than the last one. We outgrew it.”
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