The Review
By RAY SPITERI Niagara Falls Review
Updated 22 hours ago
The city is close to locking up 8.1-acres of land at the corner of Swayze Dr. and Stanley Ave. for its future Niagara Falls Transit/people-mover storage building.
On Tuesday, council agreed to buy the Zavitz property. The owner is looking for $1 million.
The idea is for a centralized operation, maintenance and storage facility to be built there for the city’s fleet of conventional transit and tourist buses, as well as for Go Transit buses.
The property is south of, and adjacent to, the municipal works property.
GO Transit will pay for the land purchase out of the $5.9-million contribution it made towards the project.
The city and GO came to an agreement last year to share a new storage facility. To accommodate GO’s needs, additional land, such as the Zavitz property, was needed.
In October, councillors backed the idea of combining the operations of Niagara Falls Transit and the city’s incoming fleet of people-mover buses in one building. They believe it will save taxpayers money.
Niagara Falls Transit currently operates out of a roughly 50-year-old building at Bridge St. and Erie Ave. City officials say the facility is not suitable to meet the future needs of the municipality’s transit operations. It would cost an estimated $4 million just to bring the Bridge St. facility up to current building code standards. Having separate buildings for Niagara Falls Transit and the city’s people-mover buses would be a duplication, say city officials. If maintenance, storage and operations are combined at Stanley Ave., the Bridge St. site could be available for redevelopment.
It’s also hoped the new centralized facility will be able to service out-of-town buses.
The budget to design and build the combined facility is $21.5 million. The federal and provincial governments provided a total of $50 million for the development of the people-mover system. That money, as well as the contribution from Go Transit, will be used to buy buses and build associated facilities.
Staff continues to study building alternatives and seek cost estimates. Councillors will eventually decide whether to go with a facility providing no indoor-storage for its buses, except for the fleet of GO buses — which would cost city taxpayers $2.1-million — or a facility providing 50% indoor storage for its buses, as well as for GO buses, at an above-budget cost of $4.5-million.
