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Mountain Line’s new building at the downtown connection center on Phoenix Avenue is almost ready to open its doors to the public. Construction is complete, installation of furniture is ongoing and staff are preparing to move over to the new facility ahead of the first day of business there on Monday, June 9.

The opening will come almost exactly two years after the transit agency broke ground on the project. Going forward, all of Mountain Line’s customer service, dispatch and administrative staff will work from the downtown location, and the existing Mountain Line facility on Flagstaff’s east side will serve as a base for maintenance and operations.

“We’re very proud to deliver this project,� CEO and General Manager Heather Dalmolin said during a tour of the new space. “We wanted it to be a community asset in the downtown area, and I believe that’s what we’ve delivered.�

“We want people to look at the building and say, ‘That’s our transit program,� with pride,� Dalmolin added.

Jacki Lenners, deputy general manager, said the move would make Mountain Line’s services more easily accessible to the community. “We will be where our customers are, for the first time,� Lenners said.

Through the front doors are the customer service counter and public restrooms, which will both be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. At the counter, riders will be able to “buy bus passes, ask questions, get trip planning advice [and] claim lost and found,� Lenners said.

The lower floor also contains a reservable community meeting room and a tenant space with its own exterior entrance, which has yet to be leased out but can house a service agency or similar organization in the future.

Beyond the public areas, the building contains two break rooms for Mountain Line’s operators and employees: one downstairs, with an attached “wellness room� containing exercise equipment, and another upstairs, with access to a rooftop patio nestled behind one of the building’s banks of solar panels.

The upper floor contains most of the office space for procurement, human resources and other administrative staff, while the lower floor will host support staff for drivers.

“The people who are in the field will have support teams right here in this building for them,� Dalmolin noted. “We’ve never had support staff at our connection center. That was a focal point.�

MetroPlan, which previously leased office space in Mountain Line’s Kaspar Drive building, will move into an upstairs office. The Flagstaff Police Department will occupy a space downstairs, giving officers working in the area somewhere to get out of their vehicles, complete reports or paperwork, and follow up on phone calls, according to Flagstaff police public information officer Sgt. Jerry Rintala.

The department’s office at the connection center will not be open to the public, but officers there will remain on duty and able to respond to any incidents occurring nearby, Rintala clarified.

Thoughtful design

The building was designed with sustainability, aesthetic appeal and a comfortable working experience in mind. It received Gold-level certification from Coconino County’s Sustainable Building Program.

Remains of the old city-owned warehouse that previously occupied the site, along with limestone excavated during the extension of Beulah Boulevard, were repurposed to help create the building’s necessary 6-foot lift above the Rio de Flag floodplain.

Heating elements are embedded within the concrete floor of the first level to warm the entire building during winter, and they extend through the ramps and staircases outside to prevent ice accumulation.

The cooling system can recirculate air for increased efficiency, and LED lights are connected to occupancy sensors to minimize electricity use, Mountain Line’s capital projects manager Anne Dunno explained.

Flagstaff-based Loven Contracting used a combination of masonry and “mass timber� -- composite wooden beams assembled from smaller timbers -- for the structure. The wood used was Douglas fir, harvested in part from wildfire burn zones in the Pacific northwest, according to Loven’s director of marketing and community relations Carla McCord.

The stone used for the building’s exterior cladding was all sourced from southwestern Colorado, McCord noted.

“I think it’s evocative of a lot of our historic and iconic buildings here in northern Arizona,� she said. “In particular, it reminds me of Desert [View] Watchtower� -- the iconic Mary Colter-designed landmark at the eastern entrance to Grand Canyon National Park. “I think it’s a really thoughtful reflection on our architectural heritage here.�

Two public art projects, one outside and one inside, are intended to complement the facility. Outside, steel trees surround a stone “timetable� upon which significant historical events of the region are inscribed like tree rings. That sculpture, created by Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan, is titled “Southside Grove."

The second, also by Haddad and Drugan, is an illuminated glass piece entitled “Lion Eyes (Through the Forest),� which will be installed inside the building’s front windows. (When the Arizona Daily Sun toured the building, this piece was not yet in place.)

Because the building is directly adjacent to the BNSF train tracks, sound mitigation was a key concern.

“We spent a lot of time on insulation and wall thickness and what are the right barriers to noise?� Dalmolin said.

Extensive use of sound-deadening materials throughout the interior -- even the overhead lamps incorporate acoustic baffles -- ensures that passing trains register only as a low hum. As Dalmolin put it, “You know there’s a train out there, but it’s not intrusive.�

Another priority was “daylight equity,� or making sure all working spaces in the building receive at least some natural illumination through windows or skylights. McCord noted that as one of her favorite features of the building and credited the efforts of designer Kate Diamond with the firm HDR. Taken together, the noise reduction and natural light “just really contribute to this pleasant space to be in,� McCord said.

More to come -- eventually

The completion of the building does not mean the end of renovations to the downtown connection center site. But the rest of the work, which is designated as Phase 2, will have to wait until the completion of Flagstaff’s long-delayed Rio de Flag Flood Control project, a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Eventually, the area to the east of the building will be redeveloped into a bus plaza better optimized for efficient movement and pedestrian safety. And the eastern edge of the property, abutting the Rio, will become a “civic space,� according to Lenners, with the Southside Grove sculpture relocated there. There is no timeline yet for when that work will begin. 

The Rio de Flag Flood Control project, intended to reduce the risk of severe flooding during a so-called 100-year storm, has suffered from congressional inaction, funding delaysÌý²¹²Ô»å cost escalations since it received its first federal dollars back in 2000. Successive generations of Flagstaff's mayors, city councilsÌý²¹²Ô»å federal representatives have lobbied for the many millions more needed to complete the project. (The city had even contemplated taking over the project entirely, until the Corps finally allocated $52 million for it in 2020.)

The project will -- someday -- reroute the Rio de Flag out of the Southside neighborhood and back into its historic channel, through a combination of underground and aboveground channels.

The city’s website for hasn’t been updated since spring of 2023. In February 2024, Sen. Mark Kelly held a public hearing in Flagstaff to discuss the project and other water-related issues. At that time, Col. Andrew Baker of the Corps of Engineers estimated that design work for the project should be complete by the end of the year.

Dalmolin acknowledged that the uncertainty around the project’s timing is a challenge for Mountain Line. But that was also a known factor when planning the site renovations, she said.

“We are definitely at the table,� she said, “talking about the importance and the value of this not being delayed again.�