By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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GRAND RAPIDS — As work finishes on The Rapid’s newly renovated operations center, Peter Varga is keeping an eye toward the future.

The Rapid took the green lessons from its 2004 Central Station project and applied them to the renovation and expansion of the operations center. COURTESY PHOTOS

The $32 million addition and renovation project has enough capacity to support two decades of future growth for the regional transit authority, said Varga, CEO of Interurban Transit Partnership, also known as The Rapid. The project benefited from $10.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds that allowed the authority to start the project in 2009, two years earlier than planned.

“We already knew we needed to expand the facility. The stimulus funds advanced the project significantly,” Varga said.

The Rapid has been considering an expansion to the Wealthy Street operations center for some time as the facility was originally built in 1978 with an addition built in 1982. Originally built to house 110 buses, the facility had 126 vehicles crammed into it, and it was proving to be an impediment to expanded services, said Varga.

“We had reached a point where we couldn’t maintain the fleet and store the buses the way we wanted to. We were bursting at the seams,” Varga said. “We will be able maintain this garage for a quite a while into the future.”

The Rapid took lessons from the Central Station terminal project for the operations center, returning to architectural firm Progressive AE for design and The Christman Company for construction management. The Rapid’s Central Station project, completed in 2004, was the first transit center in the country to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification.

The focus on green building will reduce projected maintenance and operation costs for the transit facility. Terrazzo floors, for example, will last for 75 years or more and reduce the costs associated with cleaning and replacing carpeted floors.

Green construction at the operations facility translates into items such as a vegetative roof, indirect heating loops in the concrete floors of maintenance and storage bays, and high-speed overhead doors designed to reduce heat loss in winter months as buses enter and leave the facility.

“The costs of doing LEED brings us value over the long term, both in reduced cost for utilities and in reduced expenses for replacement,” Varga said. “There (is a) long-term recovery on the funds spent on green construction. Both for financial and environmental reasons, it was a sound decision.”

The project introduced phasing and staging challenges for architects and construction managers. As The Rapid could ill afford to shut down or move its operations for 24 months of construction, Progressive AE realized that an experienced construction manager would be needed and brought Christman Company in during the design process.

“The general magnitude of the project made it rather complex as there are so many activities that go on there. It had to remain operational in that location while renovation was under way,” said architect Seth Horton, head of Progressive AE’s transit practice. “The building consumes an entire city block, and there was not really a good staging area.”

By bringing in a construction manager early, the design and construction processes were smoothed out considerably, and the move reduced the number of costly change work orders, cutting $1 million in costs from the project, explained Zach Bosma, project leader for Christman Company.

“The owner recognized with their design partner (that) they needed to bring a CM on early to assist in the planning. We were brought on before the design was completed and worked with Progressive AE to incorporate phasing into the building’s design,” Bosma said. “We were able to take the plan to the prospective bidders on the project to incorporate those costs into the bid, so we did not have to pay extra dollars into the project later.”