Joliet to move city garage into former Pace building

Joliet plans to move its vehicle maintenance operations out of the old Chevrolet dealership where it is now and into the former Pace bus garage downtown.

The City Council on Tuesday approved an agreement that gives the city access to the former bus barn at no charge.

The city plans to eventually buy the 65,000-square-foot building that stretches along a city block on the south end of downtown.

For now, it will lease the building from Will County, which owns it. In exchange, the county will continue to occupy a city-owned building at 10 S. Chicago St. but will not pay rent while the city uses the old bus garage at no charge.

Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy said the city would pay as much as $12 million to build a building comparable with the former Pace garage.

The vehicle maintenance division needs the extra space in large part because it is now certified to do Ford warranty maintenance work on vehicles owned by the city.

“We’re going to be able to keep that in-house and get revenue for those repairs,” D’Arcy said.

Almost all city vehicles are Fords, D’Arcy said.

Instead of sending those vehicles to dealerships for warranty work, city mechanics will do the work, with the city being reimbursed by Ford for the costs.

Even with doing the additional warranty work, the vehicle maintenance division is not expected to occupy more than about 30% of the building.

D’Arcy said other city departments are coming up with ideas about how they can use the building.

“It’s a huge building,” council member Larry Hug said.

Hug noted that the county bought the building after the city previously opted not to buy it.

The Pace garage was in the building for 30 years. But Pace stopped using it in 2022 after opening a new 264,000-square-foot facility in Plainfield for its regional bus operations.

The Joliet garage for city vehicles is now at the corner of Chicago and Jackson streets, also downtown.

The building has no markings on the outside indicating its use for city vehicles. But it does have two murals and a plaque commemorating its history as a Chevy dealership that includes the first location for Bill Jacobs Chevrolet, one of the city’s biggest dealerships until it was sold in 2015. It is now Hawk Chevrolet.

The move for the vehicle maintenance division, now on the north end of Chicago Street, will just be several blocks down Chicago Street. The former Pace garage is near the corner of Osgood and South Chicago Street and is located just east of the Will County Adult Detention Facility.