RTD planners are recommending the purchase of the former Denver Post printing plant near the Mousetrap for construction of a 300-bus maintenance facility.
In a presentation to Regional Transportation District directors Tuesday night, officials said the site meets key criteria for the new bus- repair operation, including industrial zoning, close proximity to major bus routes and roadways, a location less than 3 miles from Union Station and an expected cost within RTD’s budget.
The site needs to be near Union Station for staging 16th Street Mall shuttle buses, officials said.
RTD must hold a public hearing and the agency’s board must approve the acquisition.
Keith Howard, a community leader in the Sunnyside neighborhood west of the Fox Street printing plant and south of Interstate 70, was dismayed.
Howard, president of Sunnyside United Neighbors, said the site at the juncture of I-70 and Interstate 25 is about one-half-mile from the planned 38th Avenue commuter rail station that will serve rail lines to Arvada/Wheat Ridge and Boulder/Longmont. The area is ripe for higher-value, transit-oriented development, he said.
A bus-repair facility will discourage such development, Howard added. “This area has tremendous potential. The point is not what it is now, but what rail transit infrastructure will catalyze.”
RTD must move its bus-repair operation near Brighton Boulevard and 31st Street because it plans to locate a commuter rail maintenance facility there, general manager Cal Marsella said.
The Denver Newspaper Agency, the business operation that supports The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, sold the Fox Street printing plant for $17.1 million in February.
Marsella said RTD already has had some discussions with the site’s new owners about a negotiated purchase. An alternative is to take the property by eminent domain, a process in which the transit agency would pay the owners “fair market value,” Marsella said.
