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For Board Meeting Of: August 24, 1995 MEMO TO: BOARD OF DIRECTORS FROM: BILL FREY SUBJECT: DOWNTOWN TRANSTT REPORT CENTER ADVISORY CONfMITTEE On behalf of the Board, I have served for the past 6 weeks as the chairman of the Downtown Transit Center Advisory Committee. With the assistance of the Technical Task Force, the Committee has sorted through many issues to review potenrial transit center sites in the downtown area and develop recommendations for the Board to review and consider. The Committee and Task Force have done a very fine job in this assignment. THE STUDY PROCESS The process began with an overview of the past studies, identifica!ion of current sites of interest, and an ex~lanation ~f the Federal grants and the timeline that the District is working under. The Advisory Corrunittee initially idPntified 14 sites in the downtown area ror consideration ny ttie Technical Task Force. The technical group returned with six sites for more detailed review, and that group was subsequently reduced to four primary sites of interest to the committee. The four final sites were labeled the Movieland block, the Senator block, the Greyhound block, and the Washington Mutual block (see Attachment A). Staff worked with both the committee and the task force to provide information on sites and to assist in developing evaluation criteria and a process to score the final sites. Over the past several weeks the study team has been looking at Iand uses on the prospective sites, evaluating access and traffic patterns, comparing assessed values of the properties, and rating the sites on their ability to meet service needs of the District and its patrons. To rie together the committee's scoring process, an evaluation matrix was developed. Al] members of the committee were asked to score the sites from 1 to 5. A copy of the final table is attached (B). Each site was scored on the eleven evaluarion criteria, and the scores of all committee members were averaged to form the composite matrix that is attached. As can be seen, the fow sites were scored fairly close together. After lengthy discussion by the Technical Task Force, several of the evaluarion criteria were weighted more heavily than the others--trafnc considerations, ease o~ uLLs ac~e~s, adzquacy ~f th~ site to accommodate facilities, and desirability of the site from a bus rider standpoint gained a higher importance in the technical group's view. An around-the-table poll ended up ranking the Senator block as a strong preference, with the Movieland block second, followed by the Washington Mutual and Greyhound sites. COMMITTEE FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The Advisory Committee met on August 16 to review the work of the technical group and formulate final recommendations. Staff presented the four final sites and reviewed the scoring and the task force discussions pertinent to each site. ; A vote was taken around the table, and as may be noted on attachment C, the Advisory Committee , split evenly on three of the final sites--the Senator, Washington Mutual, and Greyhound. The