By OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Lead Reporter - Salina Post
Just south of Sunflower Bank on East Schilling Road, Evergy celebrated the official beginning of construction for the new 57,000-square-foot Salina Service Station.
"We're looking forward to consolidating all of our employees and materials into one location that's going to allow us a faster response to our community's electric needs," said Amber Slater, Evergy's Salina Division manager. "This site will house our distribution line group, our substation group, fleet materials and our metering teams all under one roof."
Evergy Vice President Ryan Mulvany said efficiency drove Evergy to build a new service station and move from its current location on Ohio Street.
The new building site at 3330 Progress Drive will include features like expanded storage space for materials, garages for workers to prepare service vehicles and more new elements outside.
Construction plans included a solar array for renewable energy, a rainwater harvesting system and electric car chargers.
Salina Mayor Bill Longbine addressed the small crowd alongside Slater, Mulvany and Allison Water, the senior safety and performance management director.
"This is another sign of progress in Salina," Longbine said. "With a combination of the state, city and county resources working together to make this happen. That's what we do in Salina — we work together to get projects going."
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The expanded footprint and space around the new site allows for larger growth for Evergy in town since its current location was once a shared facility with Kansas Gas Service until it moved out of that building earlier this year.
Kansas Gas Service and Evergy's partnership began generations ago, but Mulvany said that Salina's growth required the company to have a larger footprint.
"Our equipment, things we put up in the air and underground all over the place just keep getting bigger," Mulvany said. "This is good for us to be able to move out to the spot where we have plenty of land to spread out and safely and efficiently serve the community hopefully for a few more generations to come."