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Attention-getter
New Lynx Central Terminal gives downtown an architectural icon.
By Scott Powers | Sentinel
Staff Writer
(Posted October 31, 2004 )
ORLANDO -- Inside Lynx's new, colorful bus-terminal
lobby, a 20-foot-wide video screen will scroll departure times,
display messages and show important TV broadcasts while passengers
wait in an air-conditioned lounge or get a bite to eat.
It's a far cry from what Lynx riders are used to.
At the current bus station they crowd outdoor benches
while buses jockey through a crowded lot, all under a low canopy
that keeps out neither blowing rain nor evening sun, yet manages
to trap exhaust fumes. Bus information is taped to a bulletin board.
"We just had to make do with what we had," Tiffany Homler,
Lynx's deputy director for planning, said of the old station.
The attitude is different for the new $29.2 million
Lynx Central Station at Garland Avenue and Livingston Street. Lynx
will start moving its administrative offices there this week. Buses
will roll in Nov. 14.
If the current station on Central Street has the ambience of a back-alley
bus depot, the new station rises above Interstate 4 like an architectural
icon for downtown.
The multicolored, 70,000-square-foot office building and connected
20,000-square-foot passenger terminal curve along Garland, accented
with ropes of neon-like lights. Behind it, the bus depot is twice
as large as the old one and lies beneath 60-foot-high, rolling canopies.
"It's an attention-grabber kind of building," said Frank
Billingsley, executive director of the Orlando Downtown Development
Board.
Lynx officials prefer to call it an "intermodal center,"
because it was designed to bring together buses, commuter trains,
light-rail trains, cars and bicycles. The trains, though, might
be nearly a decade away -- if they ever arrive.
Lynx, Florida's third-largest bus agency, carries more than 70,000
riders a day on 236 buses roaming 62 routes through Orange, Osceola
and Seminole counties. Most routes go in and out of a hub at the
downtown station, and many riders come downtown first, then transfer
to another bus to their destinations.
The new passenger terminal has space that will be leased to food
service and retail companies, though those stores won't open until
next year. There also are automated teller machines, electronic
ticket dispensers, the wall-sized video screen, and a much larger
ticketing window.
"Wow," said Sabien Willis, 32, of the new terminal. A
laid-off Disney animator whose car is not running lately, he rides
the bus daily to Gatorland, where he works as a face painter.
While waiting for a bus at the old downtown station, he said he
is eager to try out the new one.
"It's got a real nice futuristic look to it," Willis said.
Lynx bristles at the notion that the still cash-strapped agency
built itself a palace. Planned in 1999 by a previous Lynx board
and administration, the building will be finished more than $1 million
under budget. And most of the construction is paid for with state
and federal money, including $21 million in grants.
If Lynx didn't spend the grants, some other bus agency would have,
said Lynx executive director Linda Watson.
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