OCEAN CITY – A seven-year Transportation Campus Plan has gone into “hyper speed” with the Public Works Complex looking at a revamping in the upcoming years.
Public Works Director Hal Adkins reported the Maryland Transportation Administration (MTA) hired the KFH Group to conduct a needs assessment of the Public Works Complex on 65th Street behind the Public Safety Building, which was completed in February 2008.
“Their job was to assess the current condition of our Public Works Complex relevant to the transportation operations and lack of vehicle storage,” Adkins said.
The current bus barn was built in 1983. At that time, Ocean City’s transit system consisted of 13, 27-foot buses called Mighty Mites made by Thomas and 15 employees that the building was designed around.
Today, the transit system consists of 65 pieces of equipment, including 40-foot buses, and at any given time 150 to 175 employees.
KFH Group’s needs assessment concluded that a project was necessary to support the growth in transportation since 1983, which led to the Campus Plan Study that was conducted in July of 2010 by Whitman, Requardt and Associates. The Campus Plan Study included three different components of space needs, condition assessment of all facilities, and the design of a conceptual campus in the form of a map that is hanging in Adkins office.
“They studied everything on the site from the admin building to the service center, the purchasing department, the bus barn, they reached out to Terry [McGean, City Engineer] to discuss the boat ramp and the parking layout, and water and wastewater growth in the area,” Adkins said.
The Campus Plan Study was completed in June 2013 and also supported the project. The overall campus plan consists of a project worth $16.7 million that includes modifications to the admin building, demolition and reconfiguration of a portion of the warehouse and purchasing building due to traffic patterns, modifications to the bus barn to make it into a storage facility only, relocation of the bus wash, modification and relocation of the fuel island, and a parking facility that would serve all of Public Works and Transportation.
As a result, the MTA issued a $1.25 million grant for design and engineering that was included in the Fiscal Year 2013 budget with a local match of $125,000 set aside.
Adkins explained normally the funding ration is 80 percent, federal; 10 percent, state; and 10 percent, local. However, when the study was submitted and after review, the state’s stance is $9.1 million of the project is eligible for funding and $7.5 million is ineligible for funding.
Recently the town was notified the MTA wants to pursue a Federal Transportation Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Grant.
President Barack Obama signed the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriation Act on Dec. 16, 2014, allocating $500 million in TIGER Grants, and the State of Maryland through the Local Office of Transportation Planning, made application for three projects, one of which is Ocean City’s Transportation Campus Plan.
According to Adkins Whitman, Requardt and Associates will meet with the MTA next week to discuss the Scope of Services for the projects and what is considered eligible and ineligible for funding.
Out of the $7.5 million that the state has found ineligible is $2 million in office space and $4 million in a parking structure.
“My thought is if I can’t convince the MTA that they should be eligible we are able to move forward with a design that defers those cost to a later date,” Adkins said.
Adkins explained the Transportation Campus Plan’s includes the concept of a joint office building that relocates the admin building, which is also part of a Water and Wastewater plan in the future, and those two projects could be joined at a later date saving costs.
“This is not a project that will be done in one year. It is broken out over a four-year period where certain steps where one building can’t be demolished and relocated before the next step can be concluded,” he said. “But I wanted to bring the group up to speed on a seven-year effort that has been mauling along and is now gone into hyper speed. I will let you know when I get a draft Scope of Service from Whitman and the MTA as a result of the meeting, and will return with a follow up discussion.”
The Transportation Campus Plan’s construction contract has to be inked by Sept. 30, 2016 with a construction completion date of Sept. 30, 2022.