Staff initially looked at seven potential options to analyze. That number was reduced to five as some alternatives weren't feasible. Initially, the PUD didn’t consider a consolidated Service Center that would combine all Wenatchee-area operations in one location as feasible. But a deeper dive into the numbers – particularly when considered over the 50-year life of a facility – and, on the advice of a Citizen Advisory Group that was meeting with the PUD to help develop the long-term strategy, consolidation became very realistic. In the end, it turned out to be the least cost alternative. Here are some of the factors that contributed to focusing on a consolidated facility:
- An annual savings of $750,000 in staff and crew travel costs alone by reducing the number of trips and the traffic wait-times in getting materials and crews to a customer or to an outage and for staff traveling between the PUD's various locations in Wenatchee.
- More than 70 percent of current service trips are north of the current downtown location.
- A consolidated facility in Olds Station would put the PUD in the center of its customer base and at the confluence of the highways connecting all of Chelan County.
- Having customer services and the supporting administrative staff all in one location would increase efficiencies, productivity, and most importantly, convenience for customer-owners.