Above: the former church’s site… future home of North City Water District’s Maintenance Facility

For many years, North City Water District has been exploring various options for improving our maintenance facility. 

We compared several options, including expanding our existing crew-only facility at 15th Avenue NE and NE 169th Street, and purchasing a site that could accommodate our needs. In 2014, we purchased the former Northwest Church property located off 15th Avenue NE in Shoreline, as this option offered the best overall cost for our needs.

Located immediately southwest of Hamlin Park, the 3.2 acre parcel was amply sized to accommodate the District’s needs, conveniently located near the District’s current Administration Office, had little or no use restrictions (such as wetlands or steep slopes), and offered two ingress/egress points which would allow larger vehicles to drive through the site with ease.

Financing:

In order to keep financing costs as low as possible, we pursued bond financing.  When the interest rates dropped this past summer, we had our bond rating reviewed by Moody’s Investors Service: they confirmed our outstanding operations with an ongoing Aa3 Bond Rating as of October 25, 2016.

With such a great rating, we went to the bond market and on November 2, 2016, sold $7.685 million dollars of 30 year revenue bonds which will be applied to the maintenance building and other capital projects.

Planning:  

The District recently went through a Request for Qualification process to identify the most qualified architectural team to help us redesign the site for our maintenance building.

After advertising in the Daily Journal of Commerce for Architectural Services in September 2016, we received 10 proposals, and short-listed two teams for in-depth interviews.  Both teams were outstanding, however we ended up choosing Wagner Architects to help us convert the property into a maintenance facility for our crew.

Schedule:  

We recently began the preliminary design phase and are exploring a number of build-out options for the site.  We look forward to working with our neighbors this coming spring and summer as we develop our vision for the site.