LINCOLN – Lincoln soon will become the new owner of SAD 67’s school bus garage, which is located on a prime piece of commercial property.

The deal approved by the Town Council this week will benefit both the town and school district.

The school district will use the $74,000 the town pays for the property and building to help reduce the costs of a new school bus garage.

The town will save about $2,000 by reusing the old bus garage instead of building a new building to store highway equipment. The town will relocate the bus garage building to its public works site, where it will be refurbished with a new roof, new metal siding and a new concrete floor will be poured at a cost of about $33,000. A new wooden building with dirt floor would have cost the town $35,000.

Lincoln officials plan to sell the nearly half-acre piece of prime commercial property to a developer, which would generate new tax revenues for the community.

“The Town Council has been waiting for an economic development opportunity like this for some time,” said Town Manager Glenn Aho. “Once the bus garage is removed and landscaped by the public works department, it won’t take long for everyone to know the site is available, especially with the more than 11,000 vehicles that travel past the site daily.”

Aho said the site will be available for development opportunities such as retail, grocery, a fast-food restaurant, or auto repair. Proceeds from the sale of the land will be placed into an economic development revolving fund, which will be used for future development projects.

The town manager said the $74,000 purchase will be paid with funds the town received from the sale of the former J.J. Newberry building to Marden’s Inc.

For the past eight years, SAD 67 has been trying to sell the bus garage property.

SAD 67 Superintendent Fred Woodman said the sale meant the school district would now be able to build a new school bus garage. It will cost about $380,000, but all of the cost will be reimbursed by the state.

Woodman said the advantage of building the new garage now is that it will be funded through a special lease-purchase program offered by the state, which means there will be no financial impact on district taxpayers.

The superintendent said the state program will be phased out soon. “If we had not made this arrangement now, we would have had to spend a lot of money on our old garage and none of it would have been reimbursed,” he said.

Woodman said the project will be funded through a special five-year lease purchase program whereby the district will borrow the money and its payments will be reimbursed by the state beginning in 2002.

He said the district’s goal is to have the new facility built by June. it will be relocated from the high-traffic business area of Lincoln to a site already cleared at the high school.

Woodman said one of the advantages in relocating the bus garage from busy West Broadway is that the district’s fleet of 21 buses would be closer to the schools. The current location of the garage means buses must cross railroad tracks several times a day and larger buses sometimes must back almost into the road in an area of heavy traffic.