Officials from Pace, Illinois, Will County, the Village of Plainfield, and the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) joined representatives from Northern Builders Inc. to celebrate Pace’s new maintenance and storage garage near the Pace Plainfield Park-n-Ride on Depot Drive. Pace Chairman Rick Kwasneski, Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, Illinois Sen. Meg Loughran Cappel, Plainfield Mayor John F. Argoudelis, RTA Chairman Kirk Dillard, and Pace Executive Director Melinda Metzger offered comments at the event.

The $52 million facility is built on an 11.92-acre site was funded by Pace using resources from the State’s Rebuild Illinois Capital Program. Pace joins the Village of Plainfield and Northern Builders Inc. as part of their Depot Drive Public-Private Partnership, where Northern Builders Inc. serves as the design-build contractor to design and construct the facility.

The facility will allow for the expansion of Pace’s Bus on Shoulder Express Service and create space for additional vehicles needed to operate the popular service which takes commuters from various south region park-n-rides to downtown Chicago using the shoulder on I-55 to bypass congestion. Pre-pandemic, ridership on the service grew over 600% since the implementation of shoulder use in 2011. The service again seeing full parking lots and buses as riders return.

Pace Executive Director Melinda Metzger close the program before inviting attendees to help cut the ribbon on the new facility. “Because of the support we’ve received on local, regional, and state levels, we are standing in Pace’s first new fixed-route garage in more than 30 years,” she said. “This facility is a win-win-win for our passengers, for our employees, and for our whole region.”