Buses are coming to a vacant property on Northfield Drive in Waterloo – about 200 of them.
Regional councillors are expected to approve purchase of the former Waterloo North Hydro property on Northfield, near University Avenue, Wednesday Night.
The purchase price for the 17-acre site totals $7,350,000.
“It’s a good purchase for the taxpayers,” Coun. Jim Wideman told CTV News in advance of the vote.
If approved, construction work is expected to start at the site in 2017 or 2018, with approximately 200 buses using the yard regularly by 2021.
Eric Gillespie, the region’s transit director, says that by that point, the Grand River Transit system will have too many buses for them all to be serviced at the existing yards in Kitchener and Cambridge.
Some of those buses may even be articulated buses – two buses attached by an apparatus looking, in Gillespie’s words, “like an accordion.”
Wideman points to the size of the building and its proximity to a light rail transit maintenance facility on Dutton Drive as marks in the deal’s favour.
The site’s current owner paid $7.1 million for the property a number of years ago.
