Outside Location 64.

Artwork on the façade of Maintenance of Way facility, entitled Getting There, Ball-Nogues Studio. The artwork is comprised of over 30,000 acrylic chips, with the images of trains, buses and rail cars blurring and focusing depending on the viewing angle and angle of the sun.

Artwork on the façade of Maintenance of Way facility, entitled Getting There, Ball-Nogues Studio. The artwork is comprised of over 30,000 acrylic chips, with the images of trains, buses and rail cars blurring and focusing depending on the viewing angle and angle of the sun.

Some Metro facilities will never be visited by transit riders but are crucial for maintaining the Metro Rail system they ride. One of these facilities was just completed in the Arts District south of Union Station.

Metro’s Location 64 Maintenance of Way (MOW) building at 590 South Santa Fe Avenue offers new tools for maintaining Metro’s subways and displays a unique art installation.

Adjacent to the City of Los Angeles 6th Street Bridge (under construction), Location 64 will repair and maintain track vehicles (also known as non-revenue vehicles) that, in turn, maintain the Red and Purple Line tracks, signals, subway train control, communication, fire protection and security systems. The new facility will also house the Rail Operations–Maintenance of Way Group and a section of Metro’s Rails Parts Storage Group.

Ultimately, Location 64 will help increase maintenance capacity for servicing the subways and their increasing number of rail cars, which becomes vitally important once the Purple Line Extension opens.

“It was gratifying to present Metro tenants with a larger, safer space furnished with modern industrial equipment that improves Metro’s productivity,” said Ignacio Roman, Location 64 Project Manager. “This facility reflects Metro’s stewardship by creating a facility that generates solar energy, incorporates electricity-saving technologies, and recharges the local aquifer with the entire site’s storm water runoff.”

Gruen Associates designed the 86,000 square feet facility which features a warehouse on the first-floor dedicated to storing spare parts, eleven maintenance bays for repairing Metro vehicles, a tire shop, a machine shop, a vehicle car wash, and a small lobby.

The second floor houses offices, training rooms, conference rooms, worker lockers and staff break rooms. The third floor includes several work and machine shops, tool storage rooms, a locker room and parking for Metro staff.

Throughout the design process, the Design Advisory Working Group (DAG), composed of Arts District leaders and artists, were engaged in reviewing and commenting on the building’s exterior design. Ball-Nogues Studio, a Los-Angeles-based design studio, designed and fabricated the unique art work mounted on the building’s west and north sides.

Mounted on the exterior facade is a site-specific artwork by Ball-Nogues Studio, which celebrates the extraordinary innovation of past, present and future public transit systems in Los Angeles. Imagery of historic streetcars to contemporary trains and buses appear in a dynamic mural that subtly fluctuates from different viewpoints as the sun moves across the sky.

Metro Division 20 and Location 64 are connected via the southern Metro tail or pocket tracks.