Durham multimodal transit station gears up

Amidst all the excitement over the budget deliberations at this week's City Council meeting, it's easy to have missed an interesting item on the consent agenda for the week -- a plan to move forward with early construction work on the Durham multimodal transit station slated for the old Heart of Durham site at Willard & W. Chapel Hill, across from the NC Mutual Life, er, Legacy Tower building downtown.

According to the memo for Council on the agenda for Monday night's meeting, the constant rise of construction prices has impacted the Durham Station, as it has so many other projects in the Bull City. Two of the major unknowns of the site, however, are:

• The potential environmental remediation costs for the land, given the presence of a former automobile repair shop on the site, and
• The constantly-rising cost of structural steel.

As it stands, the project is over-budget and the City's working with the project architects on everyone's favorite term, "value engineering" -- that is, scaling back on project elements to reach the desired cost. Of course, City staff prefer to keep the design as planned and to try to instead squeeze every mile out of the existing funds.

So, it's been proposed that the City move forward with bidding out and beginning work on the preparation of the transit station site, including earthmoving, mass grading, erosion control, and -- the kicker -- environmental mitigation. This is seen as a riskier phase in terms of project costs given the unknowns of what's under the soils. The plan is to begin this work even in advance of having the rest of the costs known... or even the whole project as designed greenlighted... in order to settle this part of the cost question.

Secondly, the City's planning to move forward with getting bids and delivery timeframes on structural steel needed to erect the building, though not to actually carry through on the order until it's known whether the project as a whole will be financially feasible.

The long and short of it for downtowners? Don't be surprised to see bulldozers chugging along at Willard and W. Chapel Hill soon... but don't hold your breath waiting for the station to actually begin rising from the ground, either. No matter what, nothing more on that front will take place until the City Council resumes its meetings in August.

Comments

[Chuck Clifton]

Is anyone aware of a public hearing having been held on the design of this structure? I think too many sins have been committed in the name of municipal architecture and this one (in my opinion) is right up there. Aside from many of the issues already highlighted on Endangered Durham with this design, I think the entire concept of this glassy modern foolishness is in stark contrast to the historical character of downtown Durham. My vote? I think we should build a structure that is all brick and that takes design cues from our beloved Union Station. Such a memorial for one of our greatest lost treasures is the least the City owes the people of Durham. After all, whatever is built we'll have live with for decades ... unless, of course, we can convince Neighborhood Improvement Services to condemn it and plow it down with ... wait, wait ... OUR tax dollars!

[Bruce]

It is a TERRIBLE design- the usual ugly and nonfunctional glass and steel mess that the Freelon Architecture Group loves to create.
Besides not fitting in with downtown at all, the very non-environmentally friendly all glass exterior will lead to ASTRONOMICAL heating and cooling bills for the city.