Manteca isn’t overly friendly when it comes to mass transit.

City leaders hope to change that, though, with a $6.9 million investment in a downtown transit center at Moffat Boulevard and South Main Street.

Some 10 years after planning started in earnest, the Manteca City Council on Tuesday may authorize spending $6.9 million in federal and state transportation funds designated for mass transit as well as Measure K tax receipts by retaining Diede Construction for the final design and construction of the station. The council meets at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.

Construction will take 300 calendar days once the final design is completed. The targeted completion date is April 4, 2013. that means a dedication ceremony could take place during the 17th annual Crossroads Street Fair.

The station won’t initially serve as a passenger train stop. That may come in the future with the extension of the Altamont Commuter Express service to Modesto and Merced as either traditional heavy rail or possibly as a high speed train. In the mean time it will serve as a hub for Manteca Transit buses and San Joaquin Regional Transit District bus service. It could also one day accommodate a return of Greyhound service to the community. The transit station will also have something the original train station didn’t - meeting rooms compete with catering kitchen plus two outdoor plazas for public gatherings.

In the early planning stage, there was a desire to have an outdoor plaza to accommodate community gatherings such as concerts, art events, and such.

The addition of the meeting rooms and public plaza is an effort to stimulate more activity downtown. The rooms will be available for rent to the general public. The structure will also house administrative offices for the Manteca Transit system.

The station will employ a traditional design in an effort to blend into the more traditional downtown buildings as well as to draw the Moffat Boulevard corridor and the central district together. The city has a long-range goal of upgrading Moffat as a small business park/retail corridor connecting with Spreckels Park and development planned further to the south such as Oak Valley Community Bank’s envisioned six-story office tower-.

Should future rail servcie include a stop in Manteca, the project is being designed to allow the addition of a passenger platform.

The 7,000-square-foot station will be accompanied by a 100-space parking lot on 3.1 acres. The plan also calls for allowing on-street parking along Moffat.

The site plan calls for a public plaza to the west and north of the actual transit station. There will be a separate entrance near Grant Street for dropping off passengers that includes a roundabout for turning around. Once past the roundabout commuters can access the parking lot. The same parking can be accessed from the eastern edge of the transit site.

Busses will enter directly across from Grant Street and then loop back to Lincoln Avenue. In between there will be space for five buses to load and unload.

Federal stimulus funds will be used to install a fiber optic cable to run from the proposed transit station to the Civic Center at a cost of $300,000.

The fiber optic cable will provide the backbone for park security cameras that are going in at Southside and Library parks as well as to connect with safety cameras that will be put in place at various bus stops along the city’s transit system for improved security at a cost of $133,400. The security cameras for bus stops as well as the ability to build 10 to 15 bus shelters complete with benches, trash receptacles, and improved signage at most Manteca Transit stops at a cost of $1,353,798 is also being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.