Gary Parsons is not only looking at tomorrow, but five and even 40 years down the road.

The city’s transit services manager said the city’s brand-new, state-of-the-art transit services facility, at 900 London Bridge Road, will lead the way for city buildings in terms of efficiency, accommodation and the environment. The building, which opened in December, was made possible due to city staff securing more than $750,000 in federal grant funding from the Arizona Department of Transportation.

“Transit has always been kind of a vagabond in the city,” Parsons said, adding that for the first time, the department has its own building. “We’re very happy to be here and definitely excited. It’s a great thing for us and it’s going to be a wonderful thing for the city for year’s to come.”

The 4,920-square-foot building features multiple offices, conference rooms, high-efficiency windows, motion-sensor lighting and dozens of other environmentally friendly features, said city procurement official Lyle Block.

“It’s probably the most energy-efficient building we have,” Block said. “We were trying to lower the impact to the city as far as outlay to the utilities and maintenance and I think it’s going to mean a bundle of savings for the city.”

Design and procurement of the building was a somewhat difficult process considering the scope of the project, Block said.

“It’s not an easy thing to do, to envision yourself in the future down the road 20 or 30 years and try to accommodate to the specifications for that,” he said. “But we made a lot of decisions based on the future of the city and it is more geared toward training.”

While Phoenix-based Modular Solutions handled construction for the building, officials say several local subcontractors were hired to work on the project.

“When we could hire a local company to do it, we did,” Parsons said. “There were some items in the facility that we just simply didn’t have anyone in town that could do it. But most of it was actually built by local subcontractors.”

City officials plan to apply for future grants for new ADOT software to train new transit staff at the location. Depending on grant availability, officials expect roughly 80 percent of the project to be paid with federal dollars.

“We’ll be able to have our staff obtain certification and receive other things like CPR training here once we get that up and running,” Parsons said.

The new building comes during a transition phase for the department, Parsons said. The city has lost roughly 15,000 riders with 122,471 in 2010 down from 137,658 in 2004, according to transit figures. The decrease came following the decision to switch from curb-to-curb to fixed route services. But efficiency has been a high priority as the city also cut down on roughly 170,000 fleet miles logged and more than 15,000 labor hours, saving the city thousands of dollars.

“Our growth has slowed a little because we’ve lost so many people due to the economy,” Parsons said. “It’ll come back, although probably not in as big of a fury when people were pouring into town.”

But transportation should be on the rise soon, Parsons said, and Lake Havasu City will be prepared for when it does, without using city dollars.

“It’s a win-win for the city because public transportation is growing rapidly across the country,” he said. “And obviously the threat of higher gas prices down the road means we need a stronger public transit system in Arizona. This facility will help us lead when that happens.”