HomeMy WebLinkAbout03/13/2001, 3 - DOWNTOWN TRANSFER CENTER: OSOS STREET IMPROVEMENTS, SPECIFICATION NO. 99267 Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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extremely off schedule. As the NARF report neared its completion, staff pushed the DTC project
so that the City Council could consider the two projects as possibly part of one larger
comprehensive transit strategy for the downtown.
What all is included in this Project?
As shown on Attachment No. 1, the project consists of basically four elements:
1) Intersection improvements at the intersection of Osos and Palm. These enhancements are
meant to bring a sense of place to the intersection and tie the three government centers
(City Hall, County, and Library) together. This unique identity will give transit
passengers a feeling of true sense of a transit center —although by no means the same
sense that an off-street facility would.
2) Roadway and sidewalk improvements on Osos Street between Mill and Palm. In this area
the sidewalk would receive a new treatment, including a sawtooth design to allow easier
bus movements, pedestrian and bus passenger benches, landscaping, and new lighting.
3) Public restrooms. Located near Mill Street would be new restrooms to serve transit
passengers and the general public. Currently transit passengers use restrooms at City Hall
but often City Hall is closed. In addition, the Downtown Association has asked for more
public restrooms at various locations throughout the area. Other areas anticipating more
public restrooms are Parking Lot#2 (on Broad Street) and Marsh Street Parking Garage
Expansion (restrooms located on Morro Street).
4) City Hall Parking Lot Improvements. About four years ago the City Council directed that
the existing parking lot behind City Hall should be rebuilt. The Council agreed in 1998
to combine the City Hall Parking Lot project with the DTC because of the change in
driveway locations (to Mill Street from Osos Street) and the fact that the DTC would
actually encroach into a portion of the parking lot. When completed the City Hall parking
lot will include new landscaping and 46 parking spaces, down from 50 current spaces.
.When Council conceptually approved this plan, the loss of 4 spaces was considered an
acceptable trade-off in exchange for an improved, safer DTC -City Hall parking lot
relationship. Overall City Hall parking needs will be more fully addressed in the context
of the Copeland/French building and our overall downtown parking strategy.
These improvements include the removal, replacement and trimming of some trees within
the parking lot and also along Osos Street. The tree removals within the parking lot have
been.reviewed and approved by the City Arborist and also received conditional approval
from the ARC. Subsequent to the ARC meeting one additional cork oak tree has been
identified for removal at the intersection of Palm Street — Osos Street. This tree is being
removed due to the elevations of the brick pavers and the creation of the public sitting
bench on the intersection corner. Staff proposes mitigation of this removal by augmenting
the location with 3 additional trees (jacaranda) at the intersection or replacing the cork
oak in kind.
Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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Funding Limitations &Loss
The DTC Improvement project is funded via a $600,000 capital grant from the Federal Transit
Administration that included a City commitment of $150,000 of matching funds for a total
project budget of$750,000. FTA grant guidelines require that the monies be spent for the already
approved DTC Improvement project or not at all. Therefore, a "use it or lose it" provision
regarding the existing funding prevails. In addition, the grant is quite old and must be drawn
down upon soon or the money will lapse back to the FTA. None of the existing FTA monies can
be assigned to the NARF project.
At its meeting of 12/15/1998 the City Council created the DTC project and allocated$500,000 of
the FTA grant and $125,000 in TDA towards the project budget. Subsequent to that time an
additional transfer of $35,000 has been added to the budget to cover the Insite design costs.
Therefore to date, Council has appropriated $660,000 for this project.
Timing of the NARF Transit project
As mentioned previously, the DTC was envisioned to serve the City's transit needs for the next
15-20 years i.e. until full build-out of the City. The eventual location was to be near the railroad
at the RTC site. Given the recent NARF study, it may be that the ultimate transit transfer center
may remain downtown — on one of eight different layouts presented to the Council in a separate
agenda packet. Even if Council adopts some form of a NARF Transit component at its meeting
of March 13, 2001, development and construction of that project is a minimum of 4-5 years
away (and most likely 5-10) and will take consistent support of many successive City Council in
order to reach fruition.
This is primarily due to the fact that additional studies will need to be performed in order to
acquire the site, an environmental impact report will probably be necessary to meet NEPA (if
Federal funds are applied for and received) and CEQA requirements, and only then can
acquisition (using federal dollars), design and construction begin. Property acquisition and
relocation issues will also take a very long time to resolve. Identifying and securing enough
funding for the total project will require a major work effort in and of itself.
Therefore, the likelihood that the DTC will still be needed as an interim facility is very high.
Is the money spent to do the DTC improvements just wasted money
Staff believes the answer to that question is no. This project is funded and can be built right away
and thus provide a better transit transfer center until the long range one is complete. Once the.
new transfer facility is in operation, the City will only have to remove the sawtooth sidewalk
component of the DTC to provide a wider plaza area adjacent to City Hall. All remaining
portions of the project and amenities can remain to benefit the City in general.
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Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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Existing driveway locations of the City Hall parking lot require that SLO Transit use both sides
of Osos Street to perform current transfer operations. The current bus stopping locations often
lead to unsafe pedestrians movements such as walking in between and around the back of buses
during high activity times. The DTC improvements will allow transfers of SLO Transit vehicles
to be done on the west side of Osos Street which will increase pedestrian safety dramatically.
In addition, the public restrooms, the widened sidewalks and the higher quality shelters will
directly improve transit patron use of this area and will lesson the conflict between the City Hall
and transit system activities.
Finally, even with a regional transfer facility housed at a NARF center location, there will likely
still be the need to have buses, vanpools and carpools access the immediate vicinity of the City
Hall to load and unload commute passengers. The proposed DTC improvements could be used
for these activities with little impact to the proposed design of City Hall functions.
Because of these issues staff is recommending that the DTC project go forward to construction
subject to the funding changes that Council may deem appropriate as part of consideration of this
issue.
CONCURRENCES
The project has received NEPA and CEQA environmental review; has received approval from
the State office for Historical Preservation (SHPO).
The project received conditional approval of from the Architectural Review Commission on
March 15, 1999.
FISCAL IMPACT
As stated earlier, the City Council created the DTC project on 12/15/1998 and allocated
$500,000 of the FTA grant and $125,000.in TDA towards the project budget. Subsequent to that
time an additional transfer of$35,000 has been added to the budget to cover portions of the Insite
design costs. Therefore to date, Council has appropriated $660,000 for this project
Even with a FTA grant budget of $750,000; transit funds would not be able to cover the full
construction costs estimated for the project.
1999-2001 CEP Budget
Appropriating the remaining $100,000 in the FTA grant at his time will increase the available
construction budget for this project to $721,000.
Current Budget Total: $660,000
Encumbrances:
Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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(Insite design contract with contingency) $39,000
Remaining for Construction: $6219000
Leftover FTA Grant.Appropriation: $100,000
Total Remaining for Construction: $7219000
Insite Design has now provided a construction estimate to construct all four major components of
the DTC in the amount of$ 800,000.
Construction Estimate
Architect's Construction Base Estimate: $597,000
Restrooms' $46,000
Intersection Improvements: $84,000
Total Architect Estimate: $7279000
Construction Contingency(12%): $73,000
Total Construction Cost Estimate: $8009000
Total Remaining for Construction: $721,000
CONSTRUCTION SHORTFALL: $79,000
What has led to this shortfall?
First, project construction has been delayed approximately two years to address the NARF issue
and as a result, is encountering current construction cost levels that are substantially higher than
when the project budget was approved. Second, General.Fund monies for the City Hall Parking
Lot improvements that are not the responsibility of the DTC project never got budgeted.
Given the current bid climate, staff specifically asked the architect to verify these current cost
amounts so as to reduce the likelihood that their estimate would be exceeded when bid results
came in. Thus, individual construction cost estimates have been made using conservative
estimation techniques and also were verified by an independent estimator to verify their validity
to the current market.
Staff is proposing to close the funding shortfall for this project using two mechanisms: increase
some funding and decrease some project components.
First, and most obviously, is to budget for the City's portion of the parking lot project. The cost
estimate of the total parking lot improvements is $127,225. However, staff estimates that 35% of
that cost can be directly attributable to transit related impacts (for example new driveways are
Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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required because of the DTC). As such approximately $82,696 would normally be the General
Fund's responsibility for this project. Since this amount exceeds the remaining shortfall, only
$79,000 of general fund monies should be appropriated at this time to cover the remaining gap in
funding.
The supplemental funding needed for this project is not available within existing resources. As
such, we recommend appropriating $79,000 from the unreserved General Fund balance. Based .
on the Mid-Year Budget Review for 2000-01 and Council-approved changes since then, this will
result in an ending fund balance that is 26% of operating expenditures compared with our policy
minimum of 20%. Additionally, this will reduce the estimated carryover balance available for
FY 2001-03 to $1.5 million.
Revised Construction Budget
Current Construction Budget: $621,000
Leftover FTA Grant Appropriation: $100,000
Additional GF Appropriation: $79,000
Revised Construction Budget: $9009000
Second, the city has had a recent rash of many CIP projects coming in severely over budget. This
was demonstrated most recently by the downtown public restroom project on Broad Street, which
came in quite a bit higher than expected. While staff believes that the current architect estimate
has taken this into consideration, staff is proposing the following remedy to this issue.
Staff is proposing to bid the DTC project as a whole however; the public restroom component
will be bid as a deductive alternative. In this manner; if the public restroom component of the bid
comes in at an extremely high amount, they may be deleted and the remaining project awarded
within revised budget estimates. While this may be inconvenient, transit patrons would continue
to use the public restroom facilities in City Hall as they do today, which would not impact transit
service levels or the SLO Transit system. The project would be constructed such that the
restrooms could be constructed at a latter time when additional funding becomes available. If the
Council decides that a NARF type transit facility ultimately gets built in the downtown, the need
for these restrooms along Osos Street will be less in the long term timeframe and the City Hall
restrooms should be sufficient to carryover the SLO Transit patrons until the NARF facility is
built.
ALTERNATIVES
a. Decide not to build the DTC project. This alternative would delete the project from the
City's CIP program and shelve the current plans and specifications. This would provide a
small increase in currently programmed TDA (Transit Enterprise Funds); which could be
reallocated for other transit purposes. However, staff does not recommend this alternative for
J
Council Agenda Report—Downtown Transit Center—Plans and Specifications
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three reasons: 1) existing safety.and operational issues at the Osos Street center dictate that
some sort of improvement take place to improve transit operations, 2) current FTA capital
grant money would be lost and could not be recovered for a different project, and 3) there
will probably be long-term needs for some facility on Osos Street for transfer purposes.
B. Defer the DTC improvements until a later time. Council could choose to defer making
improvements to the Osos Street center and wait until such time as other issues, such as
NARF, are pursued. Staff does not recommend this alternative because the current federal
grant monies will lapse due to time deadlines and if the Council chooses to complete the
project at a later time, significant additional funding will be required to be earmarked for the
project.
B. Direct staff to modify the DTC project to delete.individual components. The Council could
choose to modify or delete select component of the DTC project. An example of this would
be deletion of the proposed intersection improvements to meet the proposed budget amount.
Staff does not recommend this as an alternative because the current bid climate makes it
difficult to estimate where bids will come in at and removing the intersection components
prior to bid removes flexibility if the bids come in lower than expectation.
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A - DTC Site Plan
Plans and Specifications are available in the Council office for review.
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Honorable Mayor and City Council, a�D O FIR
From: Dave Romero eu�m Ev ❑FV4 a.
eRKIORIG O POLLSubject: Osos St. Transfer Center ❑MCMT ara O PEC D1O PE DO PERS
Need
With a Council decision to move ahead rapidly to develop a Transfer Center at a
much better location (Shell Site), it is simply a waste of $3/4 million to
develop this site for 4-5 years use. After Transit operations have been
relocated, this site would have to be modified again to serve parking and
traffic needs near City Hall.
Parking Loses
Not mentioned by staff in the agenda report is the loss of 6 metered spaces on
Osos Street. To replace these (and the 4 lost by redoing the parking lot) would
cost about $200,000 (10 x $20,000/space). The City would lose about
$6,000/yr in meter revenue, and the neighborhood businesses would lose much
needed parking.
Safety
Access and egress .to the City Hall Lot is currently from Osos St. which has
slow speed traffic because of stop signs at each end of the block. The proposed
plan shows access and egress from Mill St. which is a Collector Street with
much higher traffic speeds. This exposes all users of the lot to greater risk.
Restrooms
City Hall, the Library and the Courthouse have ample restrooms to serve this
area of the city when those buildings are open. After bus operations are
shifted to a new site, there is simply no need for additional restrooms in the
area to serve after business hours. The new restroomss proposed to be
constructed for $46,000 would probably be closed to save the substantial
maintenance and repair cost.
Funding
It is my recollection that FTA funds were transferred to the City Hall Project
when the City was unable to come to terms with Stan Clinton for a site on
Higuera St. Since our latest plan returns to that block for a Transfer Center, I
believe a good argument could be made to transfer the funds back to purchase
an adjacent site. The "Use it or Lose It " approach puts the Council once again
in a very awkward position, but even if staff is correct and we lose the grant,
maybe the City should Lose it rather than moving ahead with this ill-conceived
proj ect.
Final Comments
I urge the Council to reject the staff recommendation and direct staff to move
forward instead with much needed maintenance and repair of existing RECEIVED
facilities.
MAR 1 2 2001
SLO CITY COUNCIL