New Sun Metro center prepared for the future

Sun metro has finally finished and dedicated it’s new transit operations center on the Eastside. The Centennial Transit Operations Center on Montana Avenue houses space for all Sun Metro buses and offices along with fueling, repair and cleaning facilities.

It’s been two and a half years since Sun Metro initially broke ground on the project, but work has progressed to the point that officials dedicated and held a grand opening for the building Wednesday morning.

Sun Metro actually started moving offices to and working in the building last year, but the scope and scale of the work both on the building and in reorganizing operations around it made them delay the grand opening.

The facility is designed to function today and in the future for the expansion of Sun Metro as more buses and services like more Brio rapid transit lines start up.

“We needed something more modern, we needed something for expansion,” said Jay Banasiak, director of Sun Metro. “So what we did is that when we built it, we built it so not only can it do everything we needed to do now, and even in the next several, two, three, four years, but also for the next 30 years.”

Mayor Oscar Leeser and members of city council spoke as part of the dedication. They thanked the forethought and action of past city leaders like former mayor Don Henderson to lay the foundation for the city’s mass transit system of today.

“It’s a tremendous experience that we had about making that decision to get into the public transportation business,” Henderson said. “But what we see happened since then, 40 years ago, and what has happened particularly in the last few years, is that more people need to ride the bus.”

In his speech Wednesday, Leeser credited Henderson as leading the Bicentennial Committee that created Sun Metro out of the private bus lines of the 1970s. Leeser presented him with the city’s highest honor, the Conquistador Award, in recognition.