The Transit Commission met 03/22/2022. One of the information items they discussed was the Valley Transit Center Needs Assessment. Valley Transit General Manager Ron McDonald expressed a desire for the downtown transit center to be completely rebuilt with a transit center on the first floor and either affordable housing or commercial businesses that would include a day care located on the floors above. Conversations about this are still in their early stages, but General Manager McDonald noted that the city is in the process of crafting a vision for the neighborhood located north of College Avenue and he thought the timing of that was fortuitous in terms of making changes to the transit center.
The city is current accepting community feedback regarding the neighborhood north of College Avenue. Residents can offer their comments and concerns at the website here, or by contacting Director of Community and Economic Development Karen Harkness here: Karen.Harkness@Appleton.org.
Now, onto the full recap of the discussion.
General Manager McDonald said that when he first started at Valley Transit in 2016, they evaluated all of Valley Transit to see what kind of shape they were in.
The first and most important issue was that their entire fleet of buses was outdated beyond their useful life expectancy, so their priority had been to replace the bus fleet. They were successfully able to get grants to do that and the entire fleet of buses is now replaced. Currently, the oldest bus is from 2017 and has over 200,000 miles on it.
As they started looking at other areas, they knew that their administrative and maintenance facility was in need of significant work. For example, chunks of concrete were literally falling off the walls of a maintenance pit while employees were working down there because the walls had deteriorated so much. The bus wash was chained open because they weren’t able to maintain it anymore. Their radio system was non-functional, and they were using parts and pieces from Outagamie County to keep it running. They have taken a number of steps to fix all of those things, and they have a planned renovation of the Whitman Avenue facility. They hope to get some bids on that project in the next 30-45 days.
The next priority after that was the Transit Center in Downtown Appleton. He said that it needs a lot of attention and work. They’ve already started holding some very preliminary discussions with the Facilities Department. They want to hire an architect to come in and look at the facility and see what they need there.
General Manager McDonald said that he would like to see the facility completely renovated to help improve accessibly for those with mobility issues and to help make it easy for everybody to get in there. He envisioned a completely redeveloped multi-story building.
On the first floor, he would like to see a transit center where the buses drove into the building instead of parking on the street.
Above the first floor, he envisioned an apartment complex with affordable housing units possibly combined with some retail spaces or a daycare—something that he thought would complement the transit facility and the neighborhood. He said such a project would have to be a joint development with public and private partners. If such a facility were built, he said that Valley Transit would be able to obtain some revenues from the facility. would definitely be a joint development with public and private. it would have to be. They thought that between grant money and private investors, they would be able to gather enough revenue that the project would not significantly impact any of the local communities that provide funding for Valley Transit. He believed such a project would provide a new revenue stream and help attract riders.
He thought having a daycare at the location was a great idea and would “take away barriers”. He said that for years he had heard people coming into Downtown asked what they could do with their kids. If they had a daycare, people could ride the bus, drop off their kids, and go to work. If their kid got sick, they would be right there and the parent could grab their sick child and ride the bus home.
He said they were going to start looking at a needs assessment to see (1) if this idea was something they could even accomplish and (2) if they could accomplish it what would it take? After that they could start having meaningful conversations with the Federal Transit Administration regarding what type of grant dollars might be available. After that they could start working with the Community and Economic Development Department and start trying to find private sector developers who might be interested in such a project. He said that it appeared that there was a very good chance that they could obtain some federal grants for such a project.
Commission Chairman George Dearborn thought another part of the equation was the possibility of Amtrack bringing service to Green Bay which he thought would be desirable.
General Manager McDonald said they had talked about that a little bit. He didn’t know if the train would necessarily come into the downtown area. When he rides the train down to Chicago they usually stop in the suburbs at platforms, but there are not any full-blown stations.
He asked again if there was any feedback on the possibility of remodeling the Transit Station. Nobody did. He noted that they were not prepared to implement any of these plans right now and were just in the discussion phase. He said they would be coming back with a lot more information long before they decide to do anything.
[Frankly, this is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. If there was any way to make an area that already has a library and a bus station any worse it would be to add low-income housing to the mix. And the day care center idea seems like a tragedy just waiting to happen. Having a convicted felon who was just revived from an overdose shoot dead a fire-fighter was terrible enough; can you imagine if he had shot a baby or babies at a daycare located right above the transit center? Ridiculous.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=907796&GUID=DA7A0889-44BA-4297-8803-16191036F01C
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