A planned partnership between the Denton County Transportation Authority and the city of Denton to share a vehicle maintenance facility is not going to work out after all.
Agency officials and city representatives had been in talks about sharing the city's fleet services facility. After receiving an $8.2 million State of Good Repair grant from the Federal Transit Administration and the restrictions it came with, officials decided the joint facility would not work, and the agency turned its eyes back to its previous location.
Currently, DCTA buses are maintained at a shop at the city landfill off Mayhill Road.
The new 22,000-square-foot facility will be built at a 15-acre site at Teasley Lane and Shady Oaks Drive.
"When DCTA was awarded the grant funds, it was in the midst of negotiations with the city about an interim maintenance agreement with [Denton] at fleet services," said Dee Leggett, the transit authority's spokeswoman. "Once we heard that we were awarded the grant funds, we thought there was some opportunity to continue a partnership."
Leggett said officials from both entities discussed sharing staff, sharing maintenance bays and expanding on the city's existing facilities. The staff-level discussions were not formal.
But because the federal grant involves some requirements on what it can and can't be spent on, "We fully investigated the joint facility and determined it wasn't practical," DCTA President Jim Cline said.
He said the Federal Transit Administration required the grant money to be used explicitly for transit, and some of the uses of the joint facility might have deviated from that.
It also required DCTA to match funding.
Cline said DCTA was working with the federal agency to see if the money it paid for the 15-acre property could be credited toward its matching requirement, but that could not happen with a joint facility.
DCTA's maintenance and operations facility will instead be constructed on the agency's Teasley property.
Cline said he knows neighboring residents have strong emotions about the location of the facility and said the agency "has and will continue to work with the neighbors on the facility."
Leggett said the agency hopes to break ground this summer, with completion in early 2014.
"The next step is to finalize design," Leggett said. "We'll probably hold a capital project meeting to discuss the project with the community in late March."
Although this plan didn't pan out, Leggett said DCTA intends to seek out mutually beneficial projects with Denton and other area cities.
"We always look for opportunities to partner with cities or other governmental entities to make sure we're utilizing our resources as wisely as possible," she said.
BJ LEWIS can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is blewis@dentonrc.com.
