Council ready to decide on keeping part of LATS in south Lawton

City of Lawton officials may be ready to make a decision that would keep management and maintenance of Lawton’s mass transit system in south Lawton, lessening the cost of a new indoor transfer center near downtown.

Members of the City Transit Trust (a function of the City Council) will consider signing a lease agreement with Terry K. Bell II today, for a building at 2505 SW 6th Street that would give LATS management more operational space. The building at the corner of Southwest 6th Street and Bishop Road is just east of LATS’ existing operations and maintenance facilities, and the $1,300-a-month lease for that space would allow officials to address severe overcrowding that had helped push the idea of a combined transfer center/operations/maintenance/storage complex on Railroad Street, just south of the Lawton Public Safety Center.

The bulk of that construction cost was to have been covered by federal funding, but city administrators said Lawton didn’t win a grant, “which has underscored the urgency of finding interim solutions,” Planning Director Christine James said in her agenda commentary. LATS General Manager Ryan Landers has said the same thing: if LATS could come up with additional space adjacent to its south Lawton complex, it could keep operations, maintenance and storage there. That would allow the indoor transfer center project, estimated at $3 million to $4 million, to proceed as Phase I.

James and Landers have called it a temporary solution while LATS and Hendrickson Transportation Group explores alternate funding opportunities and strategies for a more permanent solution.

The contract with Bell specifies a lease of $1,300 a month, with the annual cost to be split 80/20: $12,480 from federal grant funding and $3,120 from local sources. The complex would be used as office space, under a lease that would begin Feb. 1 and run through Jan. 31, 2026, with the possibility of two, one-year extensions.

Initial start-up costs are projected at $11,500, with $4,000 each for security and office equipment, and $3,500 for furniture and supplies. Annual operating costs for the building would be $31,000, including a $15,600 in lease payment, $11,400 in utilities and $4,000 in security.

Council members said in December they wanted more time to finalize details before voting on the contract. Ward 4 Councilman George Gill, chair of the City Council’s Downtown Transfer Center Site Committee, has said he likes the idea of initially focusing on the indoor transfer center, a facility that would provide indoor seating for riders and amenities for bus drivers.

In another item dealing with city facilities, the council will consider directing its design engineer to proceed with construction plans for an amphitheater and boardwalk project planned for Elmer Thomas Park.

C.H. Guernsey already has a $48,700 contract to create conceptual designs for the amenities that will be located near or on Lake Helen, on the park’s east side, and those plans are expected to be presented today. Proceeding with construction designs would mean a $2,155,174 contract, focused on building a covered amphitheater near Playground in the Park, with a boardwalk to be installed along the south shore of Lake Helen.

If approved, the seven months work of design work would include: an amphitheater with a shell, a boardwalk, two parking lots, food truck plaza, ticket/restroom building, plaza with splash pad, boathouse for boat rentals, pedestrian bridge across lake and a small pedestrian bridge on the lake’s northwest corner, a trail around the lake and an adventure trail, fish docks/piers, observation tower, waterfall/circulating creek and boat ramp extension. It also would include dredging the lake.