The approximately 50,000-square-foot addition will increase the existing 214,500-square-foot building by about 25% and allow the regional transit authority to expand its maintenance garage, add a paint booth and increase inside parking for 32 buses at 665 Cottage St., said Michael Petrin, senior project manager for VHB, which wrote the plans for the proposal.
“The facility will also have upgrades to the structural, fire protection and electrical systems to prepare the facility for a future 100% electric bus fleet,” the plans say. “The facility will be expanded to support the gradual change from diesel/hybrid buses to electric over the next 10 years.”
The proposal also calls for a half-dozen electric chargers to be upgraded from the current 60 kilowatts to 180 kilowatts, the plans said.
“It is really an efficiency improvement. We can store more buses inside, which is a good thing,” said John Burke , capital projects manager for the transit authority.
Parking vehicles inside also extends their life and reduces maintenance needs for them, he said.
The addition will allow all maintenance and storage of buses to take place at Cottage Street, instead of having to do a lot of auto body work at 2802 Main St.
Operations involving vans and other smaller vehicles will continue at the Main Street facility, he said.
For now, no additional jobs are expected to be added, but the expansion will allow for additional hirings in the future, Burke said.
The PVTA opened its new maintenance and operations center in East Springfield in 2019 to much celebration after nine years of lining up financing, planning and construction. But the funding did not cover the full cost of the project, so the original building size had to be reduced, Petrin said.
The addition is being paid for with money from a$54 million federal grant that was matched with $13 million from the state. The grant, awarded in 2022, was part of the $1.2 trillion federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The PVTA owns a total of 18 acres of land that is zoned for industry at the location. The authority did receive approvals from the Conservation Commission because there are some wetlands on the property, he said.
Because of the addition of a paint booth, the PVTA also had to seek a special permit from the City Council. The board approved that in a 12-0 vote last week.
The company also received an endorsement from the East Springfield Neighborhood Council.
“We are pleased with the project. We were involved when the first groundbreaking happened, and we knew it took a little more to totally build it out,” said Kathy Brown, president of the neighborhood council.
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