The goal is to break ground for the project’s first phase this summer. The first phase would include making the Moser Court property solely dedicated to the agency’s operations, training and maintenance departments, according to the city documents presented at last week’s planning commission meeting. The campus would also see an expansion of its training center which would offer a larger and more comfortable learning environment that would encourage more collaboration and creative productivity.
The facility renovations will include the construction and expansion of the current parking lot. This will provide more staff parking, a driver training area, a propane fueling station for new fleet vehicles to be delivered this year and security gates.
Butler County RTA had its Hamilton facility originally approved in 2000 proposed an addition 10 years later, which included an expanded parking facility and a proposed building for a bus garage and storage.
“In order to give the operations and the training departments the space that is desperately needed, the majority of administrative services will be moving into leased office space in downtown Hamilton,” said BCRTA spokesperson Shawn Cowan, adding that this staff would be moved to 6 S. 2nd St., a block from the Market Street Station.
“This space will allow administration departments to grow as needed and give BCRTA a presence in the heart of Butler County.”
Paul Williams, BCRTA’s director of Maintenance and Capital Infrastructure, said the agency had over the years been asked to offer more rides and communities over the years, which is a good thing.
“We’re growing and expanding and we’re playing Tetris getting 45 buses into our current setup,” he said.
Then there are safety issues with employees parking on the street, and while that isn’t impeding traffic on Moser Court at Hamilton Enterprise Park, “it does tighten up a little bit,” he said.
“We just want to keep things safe for our employees and the community, and have a better design to get the equipment in and out of the building,” Williams said.
The expansion is meant to accommodate a new fleet of propane buses, which is why it needs a propane fueling station as they fuel up once or twice a day. Williams said residential property owners to the south of BCRTA property should hear fewer buses starting up and rolling out as they convert to propane vehicles.
There could also be additional types of propane-fueled transportation vehicles in the future, Williams said.
The training facility they are planning won’t be used regularly and would operate within regular business hours.
Among other elements of the yet-to-be-determined second phase, BCRTA eventually plans to expand the physical structures on the nearly 10-acre campus, a 15,000-square-foot future office building, a pair of maintenance garages (5,000 and 7,000 square feet), and 46,000-square-foot indoor bus storage facility.
Only a third of BCRTA’s Moser Court property is developed.
The request was for a preliminary and final plan development for the multi-phase project. The plan did not provide building elevations for the future phase of the redevelopment project, and the commission questioned why since one of the variances was to permit street-facing overhead doors.
“Even though it does include a building right now, the circulation of the site for bus traffic, it needs to be designed now,” Liz Hayden, Hamilton’s executive director of External Services, said, “so they need to know as they make this initial phase investment whether or not we would be okay with front-facing overhead doors because that impacts the whole design of the site at this phase.”
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