ODOT shows off shiny, new facility
BUCYRUS — If somebody really wanted to, they could probably eat off the mechanical bays in the new Ohio Department of Transportation garage on the north side of Bucyrus.
They won't stay that clean for long -- road maintenance is a dirty job -- but right now, with a long, hard winter of snow removal still to come, the new facility, unveiled Thursday with a couple of ribbon-cuttings, couldn't be much shinier.
The ODOT garage, at the back of the Crossroads industrial park just north of U.S. 30, sits on 10.3 acres, more than twice the size of the former garage on Irving Street in town.
"With the old facility we were right in the middle of a neighborhood. There were houses all around us, the backing up, the alarms, loading salt in the middle of the night. I think this facility makes us better neighbors," Joyce Miller, spokesperson for ODOT's District 3, which includes Crawford County, said.
"We’re going to have 20 dump trucks that are going to be in-house in here and under roof, so they’ll be in better condition and they’ll last longer. We’re closer to Route 30, and it will allow us to take care of the maintenance needs of the county that much more efficiently."
The old facility on Irving Street, which had 9,000 square feet of building space compared to 33,900 square feet at the new place, is also 52 years old.
"We're still operating a little bit out of there. We've been doing a lot of paving operations and kind of just getting things wrapped up before winter. They want to keep all the messy equipment there until they get it all cleaned up," Miller said.
"I'm surprised that nobody complained, but we never got any calls. I wouldn't want to live next to it. We were going 24/7," Stephen Durbin, transportation administrator for the Crawford County garage, said of the site ODOT's county workers had operated out of since 1963.
"A lot of the older facilities weren’t built to handle the maintenance needs that we have now as Ohio has grown and our needs have grown," Miller said.
Durbin gave a tour of the new site, which appeared notably uncluttered on Thursday afternoon. The barn containing the brine mixture that will be applied once the snow flies to ODOT's 400 miles of roads in the county was still mostly empty.
Durbin said ODOT will be using a mixture called AquaSalina on the roads this coming season, which he said lasts longer than other calcium mixtures and can be applied when the temperature drops below zero.
"This group is awesome. In my opinion, they're the best in our district," Durbin said of his road crew. "They take it personal if the roads aren't clear."
He said the garage will be making a dry run for the winter in a couple of weeks.
The facility includes two mechanics' bays, a welding bay, two indoor truck-washing stations and a 5,900-square-foot cold storage building, in addition to the barn that can hold 6,000 tons of salt. The Toledo Port Authority, in partnership with ODOT, built the facility, which houses 23 full-time employees, at a cost of $7.2 million.
As he showed off the new offices, Durbin noted the proliferation of computers and televisions. "Every year there's more data," he said.
As for the TVs, he said they won't be tuned to sporting events, just ODOT information and weather news.
The new facility was completed in a little over a year. Durbin said the old site on Irving Street is in the process of being transferred to new ownership.
As for the green and white directional sign on North Sandusky Avenue that still directs people to the old ODOT garage on Irving, Durbin said that "will be coming down very soon."
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