Austin Transit Partnership continues to hit more Light Rail project milestones, approving an operations and maintenance building contract and a resolution to acquire parcels of land for the project at its April 15 meeting.
The details
The 10-mile long, $7.1 billion light rail project is part of the Project Connect transit program approved by voters in 2020. This system will initially feature 15 stations with all-electric trains running every 5-10 minutes throughout most of the day, according to ATP.
In February, ATP approved a $60 million design-build contract for the first phase of the project. On April 15, the agency approved a contract with Kiewit Austin Partnership—a joint venture between Kiewit Building Group and Austin Commercial—in an amount not to exceed $25 million for the construction of an operations and maintenance facility as part of Phase 1 of the project.
The facility will serve as the light rail's home base for the trains to be cleaned, serviced and maintained and for the system's operators to work, said Brad Cummings, ATP senior vice president of procurement and contracts.
The contract will ultimately reach hundreds of millions of dollars but the agency is breaking the work up into stepped authorizations, said Lindsay Wood, ATP executive vice president of engineering and construction.
The agency also approved a resolution not to exceed $230 million to acquire up to 18 parcels of property to use as part of Phase 1.
Nine of the parcels are related to the operations and maintenance facility with the other nine are full parcel acquisitions along the light rail alignment, said Alex Gale, ATP senior vice president of real estate and facilities.
"This is the beginning of the process where people may anticipate that we will be taking condemnation actions and eminent domain actions," Mayor Kirk Watson said. "We have to emphasize this is the beginning of what will be, and we should anticipate, a sometimes an uncomfortable process."
ATP is pursuing this first batch of parcels in partnership with the city of Austin, and while no official offers have been made yet, landowners are aware they're on the list, Gale said.
The board also clarified that ATP will do the initial negotiations for the parcels but the city will engage in the eminent domain process, and ATP Executive Director Greg Canally said these are "12 to 18 month processes."
In other news
The board postponed three agenda items that would have executed a $32 million contract for ATP to lease 51,600 square feet of administrative office space at the 100 Congress building for 90 months, as well as a $15 million contract for building finish-out and improvement services of the leased space.
ATP Board Chair Veronica Castro de Barrera said that while the agency needs to find a larger space for the growing team, the board needs more time to review the staff's current recommendation and analysis.
On the Austin City Council message board April 13, Watson advised against ATP moving forward with the items, saying they come as the city, Austin ISD and Travis County face serious budget challenges and Austin residents face affordability issues.
Watson instead recommended that ATP staff co-locate in the current CapMetro headquarters, which he said would be more cost-effective and enhance partner relationships.
"The proposed action to spend tens of millions for office space without a thorough analysis of alternatives would set that back," Watson wrote. "This is an opportunity for ATP to demonstrate that it is building on the partnership we have with CapMetro, saving the taxpayers money, and watching their financial backs as we build a light rail system they have told us they want."
