Kueny Architects Proposes $6.5 To $7.6 Million In Additions and Renovations To Valley Transit Whitman Avenue Facility

The Fox Cities Transit Commission met 03/09/2021.

After reviewing the Covid related grant funds, they moved on to a presentation by Jon Wallenkamp of Kueny Architects on the Valley Transit Facilities Condition Assessment and Master Plan Update

Per Valley Transit General Manager Ron McDonald, last year they sought a request to enter into a contract for a site assessment and master plan for their Whitman Avenue facility. City of Appleton Projects Manager, Steven Schrage had been the project lead on that and attended the Commission meeting. He thought Kueny Architects had done a wonderful job with the report and the master plan. He said everyone was impressed with how thorough it is.

After some extended technical issues regarding screen sharing, Mr. Wallenkamp gave the presentation. You can download the PDF of the powerpoint here: 

Kueny Architects has been doing this for many years. Jon himself has specialized in this for their firm for 31 years. He was pleased with the assistance City of Appleton staff provided. 

The entire Whitman Avenue facility was studied by the Kueny team which included people with a range of specialties–engineers with a focus on electrical, mechanical, and plumbing, to programers, to architects–who looked at things in different ways and with different eyes. 

The facility is well-built and the main issues they’re seeing are cosmetic things, but the larger problem is that they have outgrown the facility. The current facility is just under 40,000 square feet on 4.3 acres. When the facility was designed and built, it intended to have a center drive aisle with parking off to the north and south. Over the years, they took over that space and made it efficient for operations, but Kueny’s determination was that they outgrew the facility quite a few years ago.

Inside, in the office space, there are cosmetic things that need attention to keep up with current day standards and/or help the workforce on their day to day operations. 

Money has been allocated to keep the service lane running. This is something that requires a lot of maintenance and cost every year. Their goal is to upgrade the service lane so it doesn’t need maintenance on the steel frame every 2 to 3 years. Part of their final proposal is to do a complete overhaul of the service lane, reusing a lot of the infrastructure that was put into place the last couple years.

They also want to overhaul the repair bays. As equipment has grown over the years, the shop is getting crowded and tight. Their goal is to better organize the shop and make it a safe workplace for all users.

They created a report of every component in the building and scored it as critical, poor, fair, good, or new. Overall, the facility was averaging at a fair, which isn’t abnormal for a 30 year old building.

Kueny Architects is proposing adding 24,000 square feet to the existing facility, creating a facility with a total of 63,000 square feet to house all the units and meet future staffing for the next 20 years. They created diagrams of individual room areas to make sure both that all the pieces fit within those spaces and that they also work for how Valley Transit staff will want to function in the future. They’ve also documented every component that goes into those rooms so that they could make sure that the cost estimating includes that.

They want to create additional bay parking spaces for the busses and increase the administration space. They would keep the service lane the same as far as space and location but improve and upgrade it. They want to totally overhaul the existing repair area. There’s currently a bay that’s designated just for a paint booth. They would turn that into a universal repair bay so Valley Transit can use it not only for painting but also welding and general day to day repairs. They would also add a completely new repair bay.

They would also expand the parking back so that no bus is stacked in the aisle. They would have angled parking and they’d park the busses based on dispatch like they currently do but the aisle space would be opened. He did add that if Valley Transit was to inherit the Outagamie County Paratransit service, those aisle spaces would need to be taken up by paratransit units. They did make sure the facility would be able to react and house those units.

For the office space, they plan to create a main employee and driver entrance on the southwest corner of the building and keep the main public entrance where it currently is by the parking lot. They would create a large conference room near the entrance so no visitors would need to be brought into the unit/center complex. They could just go right to a conference room from the entrance.

They wanted to put at the center core of the facility different zones for the drivers–a more quiet zone and an open zone that was a little louder where drivers could go to decompress before a shift.

They put in a small fitness area that would also serve as potential future growth if locker rooms needed to change and grow in size.

Their goal with the office was to make it open, airy, and more modern and to bring a lot of natural light into it.

In giving the cost estimates, they separated just the building costs from the additional remodelling costs such as replacing the HVAC and providing site improvements. He mentioned that the HVAC units have far exceeded their life expectancy, so they planned to replace them instead of just patching them.

They wanted to present an estimate that was all inclusive and included all the various fees that go into building a building. It looks like they estimated a total cost of $6.5 million to $7.6 million.

They also provided some illustrations of what the building might look like after it was completed. He mentioned that it was important when seeking grants to be able to show that they were shovel ready and had everything planned in detail.

He concluded by saying that the existing facility was well built and well insulated. For having been built in the 80s, it was a very well thought out and detailed facility. It is, however, going on 40 years and is starting to show its age. They have also outgrown the space within, so it’s time for an upgrade.

Nobody had any questions for the architect.

Ron McDonald told the commission that, a year or two ago, he brought up that the building would need some attention. With their blessing they went out and had this site assessment done, but this assessment is not actually architectural and engineering work. It’s just a conceptual plan at this point. The cost estimates will be further developed as they get into the actual architectural and engineering work.

Valley Transit has had a discussion with the Federal Transit Administration to see if this type of project would be eligible for grant funding. They asked us in the first step to submit an environment paper which they have submitted. They’ve done an initial phase 1 environmental analysis and a partial phase 2 environmental analysis. The FTA is reviewing that right now, and he expected within a couple of weeks they would come back and either say, “Yes, this is an eligible project” or “We need additional information.”

He said it was likely that they would want additional information. The Federal Transit Administration has requested that they move forward with architectural and engineering work because that will provide any additional information they require to determine eligibility for federal funding. Architectural and engineering work was budgeted for last year and carried over into this year, so it is a budgeted item.

Steve Schrage put together a request for proposal for architectural and engineering services that was released last on 03/05/2021. Ron hoped he’d be able to bring that to the commission at the April 27th meeting to talk about authorization and enter into an agreement for architectural and engineering services so they could move forward with this project.

The architectural and engineering work would be done in phases, starting with the initial part that they need to get FTA approval to apply for grants, then moving forward from there. Just because they enter into a contract wouldn’t mean they’d spend several hundred thousand dollars. They would start doing what they need to do to get the info they need and then move on to the next phase as appropriate. They’re trying to get all their ducks in a row and make sure the FTA is on board because without federal funding the project can’t happen.

Commission Chair George Dearborn wanted to know if they would be able to use some of the funding Valley Transit had already received on this project.

Ron said that they would be able to. They’ve talked to the FTA about using a combination of several different types of grants whether they’re 5307s, 5339s, a portion of the CARES Act, or a portion of the American Rescue Plan Act. First they need to determine that they’re eligible and then they can talk to the FTA about what the appropriate grants are and how that will all work.

George said that a project like this would be good for the grant funds that they’ve received. It seemed better to use those funds for something like this rather than for starting a program or service that would have to continue to be funded after the initial grant money ran out.

Ron agreed.

Commission member Carol Kasimor wanted to know if the funding they received would be 80/20 funding.

Ron answered that it depends which grants they’re able to use. She was correct that most of their capital grants are 80/20. But if they use the money that’s been allocated as part of the CARES Act as well as the American Rescue Plan Act money, that is eligible at 100%.

A commission member said that they’ve seen the parking bays at the facility. Even with the expansion, it seemed modest and not overly large. They wondered what they would do if there were a big transit boom to Green Bay or Fond du lac or something. Are they planning for potential future growth?

Jon Wallenkamp answered that they would have to expand west and they’d have to move the underground fuel tanks. They could also expand the bays to the north. The same held true for the repair bay. He thought that right now by picking up two new bays they had room for quite a bit of growth and the repair space would still be adequate.

Ron expected they’d be able to talk about the architectural and engineering request for proposals at the meeting on April 27. They decided to cancel the next meeting in March because the only item would be the February check register which is typically very small and could be easily done in April along with the March check register. He also recommended cancelling the April 13 meeting because that would be right after the election and the City of Appleton would be dealing with potential committee changes with new alderpersons coming on.

The Commission decided to set their next meeting for April 27.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=834830&GUID=8E3DB36D-A779-4D59-B952-3175AAA77CEE&Options=info|&Search=