Wake school board buys $13M property in Cary for potential transportation center

The Wake County Board of Education voted late Tuesday to buy a $13 million property in Cary for a potential transportation center that could store buses and house a bus repair facility.

The nearly 29-acre piece of property is located at 1660 Piney Plains Road and previously served as Crossroads Ford's service center.

The real estate purchase is likely welcome news for some Apex residents who complained in 2018 after the school system announced it wanted to build the transportation center off Optimist Farm Road, near Middle Creek high and elementary schools.

Betty Parker, senior director of real estate services for the Wake County Public School System, said the district has not decided where to build the transportation hub just yet, but the new property in Cary gives them options.

"We've only put it under contract, so we have to complete the due diligence process and then weigh costs and benefits of continuing with Middle Creek [in Apex] versus pursuing an option [in Cary] that could provide us a facility a year sooner and less expensively," Parker said.

School district leaders previously said they planned to build the transportation center on 23 acres in Apex and include a 60,000 square foot maintenance building, a 19,000 square foot building for operations, 262 parking spaces for buses and 300 spaces for staff.

The project was expected to be completed in two phases with the lot for the facility being laid by 2022. But the plan didn't sit well with some Apex residents who commented on neighborhood chat boards with their concerns about the location and traffic impacts of the project.

Specific plans for a possible transportation hub in Cary have not been announced, but Parker said the location could be more beneficial.

"It's a large eight parking lot area that has the potential to accommodate the bus storage we were seeking at Middle Creek and a large repair facility that's larger than we planned to build at Middle Creek," she said. "So it's an opportunity to consider an option that may deliver a more cost-effective solution."