JAMESTOWN
Train station project back on track
By Tom Buckham
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 05/02/08 6:40 AM
A bureaucratic logjam threatening Jamestown’s long-planned Gateway Train Station and Riverwalk Connector has been broken, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., announced Thursday.
“This is a tremendous win for the continued revitalization of downtown Jamestown,” said Schumer, praising the federal government’s “prompt and appropriate response” to suggestions he claims will save the city more than $400,000.
The rebirth of the abandoned Erie Lackawanna railroad station as an intermodal transportation and visitor center linked to the Riverwalk Connector Trail was to have been achieved largely with federal funds Schumer secured in 2005.
But the project was held up by a dispute between the Federal Transit Administration and Federal Highway Administration over which agency should oversee the development. After visiting the site in March, the senator leaned hard on both agencies to settle the matter.
Under the deal Schumer brokered, the revival of the vacant historic art deco station and construction of the connector will be treated as a single project, at a savings of $325,000 to the city, and the Transit Administration will oversee the work. In addition, the Highway Administration will reimburse the city $100,000 for a related environmental study.
If the projects had not been combined, the city would have been forced to pay a local share to both agencies.
Schumer predicted the development will “power economic growth and give tourists and local residents alike a new attraction in the heart of downtown.”
The landmark rail station, vacant since 1973, will be joined with the connector trail now under way along the Chadakoin River via a new pedestrian bridge over the downtown rail corridor.
