The former Antioch Christian Center at 325 E. Belt Blvd., which is owned by GRTC, is slated for demolition to make way for a new parking lot for buses. (Jack Jacobs photo)
Ahead of an anticipated expansion of its bus fleet, GRTC is planning to expand its storage facilities near its headquarters.
GRTC intends to demolish the former Antioch Christian Center at 325 E. Belt Blvd., which is catty-corner to the regional transit organization’s headquarters in South Richmond.
The property is to be redeveloped for additional parking for GRTC’s fleet of buses as the organization eyes the rollout of new 60-foot articulated buses to operate on the rapid-transit Pulse line next year.
“We bought the property in 2017 for fleet storage purposes but the fleet storage needs are really coming online now,” GRTC spokesman Henry Bendon said in a recent interview.
The property’s 35,500-square-foot former church building will be demolished and the 4-acre property repaved to hold GRTC’s fleet of public-transit vehicles. The property is currently being used as employee parking and storage space for decommissioned GRTC vehicles slated for the auction block or scrapyard.
GRTC bought the property for $1.7 million, according to online city land records.
Bids for the parking project are due Sept. 30, and the GRTC board of directors is anticipated to approve a contractor in October. The project is anticipated to start in November and be completed in the spring. The lot wouldn’t necessarily be used by the upcoming articulated buses, but would be needed as GRTC figures out how to store the new vehicles along with the current fleet. The organization has a parking lot for its buses next to the headquarters.
The property’s use as a parking site is expected to be a temporary arrangement, and GRTC is working on a master plan for its headquarters facilities that will likely spell out more intensive development on the site, Bendon said.
GRTC also is getting underway on a project to modify Pulse bus stops to accommodate the new, larger buses, which are intended to improve the capacity and speed of the rapid-transit line.
That project was slated to kick off Monday (Sept. 23). The work includes the replacement of worn-out rubber guide rails and the expansion of the boarding areas at the stops on the 7.2-mile line between Willow Lawn and Rocketts Landing. The modifications are expected to take 260 days, according to a GRTC news release.
GRTC awarded the $774,000 contract for that project to Sandston-based contractor Waco Inc.
The Pulse is expected to continue to operate normally during the project. Pulse stops will temporarily be moved to the nearest regular bus stop while individual stations are being worked on. Each station is expected to take two weeks to modify, and the project was expected to start at the Rocketts Landing stop.
In other moves by GRTC, the organization recently announced that it selected the site of the former Public Safety Building in downtown Richmond to be its future permanent transfer station. And Henrico County recently secured a property in the western part of the county to serve as the terminus of a proposed extension of the Pulse line.