RTD planners are recommending the purchase of the former Denver Post printing plant at the junction of Interstates 25 and 70 for construction of a 300-bus maintenance facility.
In a presentation to Regional Transportation District directors Tuesday night, officials said the site met key criteria for the new bus repair operation, including industrial zoning, close proximity to major bus routes and roadways, a location less than three miles from Union Station and an expected cost within RTD’s budget of $74.9 million.
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 I-70, was dismayed at the recommendation.
“I’m astonished that they are springing a fully formed decision on the public,” Howard said, adding that selection is an example of “stupid incompetence and failure of imagination.”
Howard, president of Sunnyside United Neighbors, said site is about one-half mile from the planned 38th Avenue commuter rail station that will serve both the Gold Line to Arvada/Wheat Ridge and the Northwest rail line to 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 current bus repair operation near Brighton Boulevard and 31st Street because it plans to locate a commuter rail maintenance facility there, said General Manager Cal Marsella.
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.
If RTD succeeds in acquiring the former Post site for the bus maintenance operation, buses would primarily get to the site from the intersection of West 38th Avenue and Fox Street. Howard said that already is a “failing” intersection.
In total, RTD looked at about 25 locations for the bus facility. It also recommended a future smaller bus facility at either 70th Avenue and Broadway, which RTD already owns, or a site at Interstate 76 and Pecos Street.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
