Grant PUD breaks ground for new Ephrata Service Center
EPHRATA – Shovels in hand, Grant PUD officials on Tuesday turned over the first dirt to mark a ceremonial start to construction of a new Ephrata-based service center for the utility district.
It will be built on a small portion of a 34-acre tract adjacent to the site of Grant County’s separate, ongoing construction of a new jail. Both projects are located just south of the intersection of State Route 282 and Nat Washington Way near the Ephrata Walmart. The PUD purchased the undeveloped, sagebrush-covered property from the county for $455,000.
During Tuesday’s ceremony attended by staff, contractors, and local dignitaries, PUD commission chair Terry Pyle said the new Ephrata Service Center will address the district’s “most emergent need” as identified in a long-range facilities study plan. It will serve the northwestern part of Grant County with modernized benefits that include more-centralized operations for work crews, improved highway access and response times, expanded capacity and room for future growth, and improved safety, said Pyle.
When completed, Pyle said he and fellow commissioners Nelson Cox, Tom Flint, Larry Schaapman, and Judy Wilson believe it will provide “great work environments … with better spaces and places” for employees.
“We as a commission are excited for this,” he said.
Planning began in 2022. Fallon Long, the PUD’s vice president of Shared Services, credited “an army of folks” in helping develop and design the new facility, which she called “a huge milestone … to serve our customers more efficiently.”
Long said construction is expected to be completed toward the end of 2027. The site will contain 316,822 square feet of buildings, parking structures, and storage. It is being developed through a “progressive design build” under a single contract that officials say fosters “better collaboration, efficiency and cost savings.”
In that process, the involved contractors are expected to provide Grant PUD with a guaranteed project cost sometime in October. The utility district’s project managers have not announced any cost estimates in advance.
The design-build team includes construction consultants Turner & Townsend Heery, Integrus Architecture of Spokane, and two Puget Sound-based companies, engineering/design firm Huitt-Zollars Inc. and Absher Construction.
The new facility will largely replace the current service center – located a block north of the Ephrata Middle School – that has been in use since the 1970s. The aging center houses the line crew department, transportation department and service garage, fueling stations, electric shop, warehouse and materials yard.
The district’s telecommunications and fiber-optic shops will remain at the downtown Ephrata site until another new service center is built in the Moses Lake area. Planning is underway for the latter facility, followed by a new Ephrata headquarters building. Timelines and costs for both projects are not yet determined.
Nor has the district determined its options for the existing Ephrata service center once operations cease there. The downtown property is hemmed in between Nat Washington Way and East Division Avenue, with grain elevators and railroad tracks to the west and a steep dirt-and-rock hillside topped by residences to the east.
Over the past 50 years, Grant PUD and the county it serves have undergone substantial growth. Fallon Long noted the district’s number of substations has increased from 19 to over 56, electric lines have grown nearly 60% to over 4,400 miles, and fiber optic cables – nonexistent in 1975 – now stretch across nearly 3,200 miles.
