City permits JTA, Balfour Beatty $40 million U2C center (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Daily Record) — The city issued a permit Aug. 9 for Balfour Beatty Construction LLC for construction on the almost $40.54 million Bay Street Innovation Corridor at 650 W. Bay St. in LaVilla.
As part of the project, the city’s permit is for a two-story, 15,019-square-foot structure is designed on 1.28 acres on a site near Broad and Water streets in LaVilla as the nerve center for the JTA’s Ultimate Urban Circulator system of automated people movers.
It is referred to as the U2C.
JTA held a ceremonial groundbreaking May 29 for the center.
Plans show a ground floor with covered AV parking and flex bay and a lift bay.
The top floor comprises the control and data rooms, offices, a conference room and an exterior terrace.
The center will include a rooftop solar microgrid that will supply power to recharge the shuttles, an education center for conversations about automated vehicle technology and electric vehicle charging stations that will be available to the public.
The U2C is envisioned as a network of autonomous shuttles that will initially operate on a 3-mile route on and near Bay Street Downtown and expand to connect to Riverside, Springfield and San Marco.
The cost of the Bay Street phase, expected online next year, is $66.5 million.
Two successive phases will involve adapting the Skyway elevated monorail into the U2C and expanding the system, pushing the estimated cost to as much as $400 million for a full build-out.
Rendering courtesy of JTA