ORLANDO-Buses start rolling Nov. 14 at the new 90,000-sf, 5.2-acre Lynx Central Station at Garland Avenue and Livingston Street. The station is a $29.2-million Downtown project that came in $1 million under budget, according to Lynx transportation officials.

Planned for 10 years, the station has 70,000 sf of office space and a 20,000-sf terminal, double the size of the old site on West Central Boulevard. A 20-foot television screen displays departure times, messages and TV broadcasts for passengers in an air-conditioned lounge.

State and federal grants totaling $21 million funded the project's construction. Lynx spent $170,000 of its own funds and took out an $8-million, low-interest loan from the State Infrastructure Bank to pay for the balance of the project, Lynx staffers tell GlobeSt.com. By relocating its administrative offices from two floors in the nearby Orange County Public Schools Education Learning Center, Lynx expects to save $1 million a year in rent payments.

The highly visible transportation hub is Downtown's most distinctive commercial structure. Sixty-foot high rolling orange canopies hover over the terminal. Michael K. Chatham of locally based HHCP Architects redesigned the building's exterior after city and state transportation officials vetoed the first 1999 drawings of a conventional building, city planning department staffers tell GlobeSt.com.

"Chalk one up for the city on this project," Dean Fritchen, a senior broker in the Winter Park, FL offices of Coldwell Banker Commercial NRT, tells GlobeSt.com. "The project came in the way they said it would." Fritchen's comment was a reference to the 15-year-old, 17,200-seat T.D. Waterhouse Arena, home of the Orlando Magic, which was completed by the city in 1989 at $105 million--or about $60 million over the original estimated development cost of $45 million.

The new bus station abuts the 5.6-acre site owned by Columbus, OH-based Pizzuti Cos., directly across from the Orange County Courthouse building at 425 N. Orange Ave. Developer Ron Pizzuti hasn't disclosed plans for his site since buying a strategically located 10.8-acre corner tract nine years ago at North Orange Avenue and Livingston Street and selling off 5.2 acres to the city of Orlando for the new transportation center.

Pizzuti paid William M. Dupont, a Louisville, KY-based horse breeder and former majority owner of the Orlando Magic, $14.2 million or $1.31 million per acre for the land in 1995, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. Pizzuti sold the 5.2 acres to the city for about what he paid for the dirt--$7.2 million or $1.4 million per acre.