Martin County, Fla., gets 14 bids to build $1.2-million Stuart transit depot

Visioning Sessions The county has received bids from 14 architectural firms on the $1.2-million downtown transit depot that officials hope is a hub for Greyhound bus and Amtrak railway services in the next few years, local media report. County staff members will spend the next couple of weeks reviewing the projects and ranking the top four or five candidates before presenting them to the commission, said Judy Halaas, county purchasing technical coordinator.

"All we did was just open
them, we haven’t had time to go through each proposal yet," Halaas said.

A selection committee
comprised of county staff members will narrow the list and possibly have the
highest-ranked firms come in to make presentations before a final
recommendation is made, she said. The process could take more than a month.

The 4,000-square-foot
facility, which has been approved for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
dollars, would be along Southeast Flagler Avenue, across from Kiwanis Park and
the Martin County Courthouse.

While the details of the
bids won’t be released until early next month, Hobe Sound-based Scott
Hughes_Architects released renderings of what the open-air facility could look
like, including one envisioning passenger rail service having returned to the
Florida East Coast Railroad tracks.

"Our vision of the
Transit Depot is that of a simple shed structure, derived from the stations of
old, but using materials that take advantage of the technology available in
2010," said Scott Hughes, principal partner for SH_Arc. "The governing roof
shape is based on the profile of the Original Stuart Train Station but modified
to maximize its shade-making surface given the orientation of the building on
the proposed site."

Federal guidelines
require the project to be completed within a year and prior stimulus paperwork
had estimated the work requiring 30 to 50 temporary construction workers.

The facility could
initially provide office space for county employees in addition to serving as a
depot and transfer location for Community Coach. The federal stimulus
application for the project described the building as being strictly for a bus
depot. However, city and county officials envision its expansion into a train
station. Planners hope to bring Amtrak service to the rail lines between Miami
and Jacksonville, which the Florida Department of Transportation has estimated
will cost $268 million, by 2013.

Local governments would
have to match 20 percent of the costs.