Paoli train station project gets big boost
by PBPA on 10/09/08 at 1:57 pm
By DAN KRISTIE, Staff Writer, Daily Local News – 09/03/2008
TREDYFFRIN — The Paoli train station project received a $500,000 bipartisan boost from Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach and Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak. The pair jointly announced the federal earmark for Amtrak to build a new transit center at the Paoli Rail Yard.
The congressmen said the new transit center will have implications beyond regional transit.
“We recognize, Joe Sestak and I, that this is such an important project for the continued redevelopment of this area,” said Gerlach, R-6th, of West Pikeland. “It will improve the quality of life and the quality of transit here.”
Sestak, D-7th, of Edgmont, has opposed the change in FAA flight patterns that would take many of the Philadelphia International Airport’s flights over residential areas in his district. He said a better Paoli Transit Center could help decrease reliance on air travel.
“Many of the flights leaving from the airport are flying to destinations less than 200 miles away,” Sestak said. “Those people should be using this train station.”
The $500,000 earmark will go toward construction of a “multi-modal” transit center that will serve Amtrak and SEPTA trains, as well as local buses. According to plans, it will be built 800 feet west of the current Paoli Train Station, a local landmark many people in this Main Line town scorn and call “decrepit.”
The question is, when will the new transit center be built?
Amtrak, which owns the station as well as the adjacent Paoli Rail Yard, plans to fund the new transit center by allowing a private developer to build a dense, mixed residential and commercial development on the rail yard site.
But because of a recent zoning dispute, that developer might not be able to build densely enough to make the project profitable. The Paoli Rail Yard was contaminated with PCBs, and although it is for the most part cleaned up, developing the site will still be expensive.
Zoning and cost concerns caused the developer, as of yet unnamed, to consider pulling out of the project late last year, according to officials familiar with the project.
But these officials said recent negotiations have put the project back on track.
John DiBuonaventuro, a Tredyffrin supervisor involved in the negotiations, acknowledged this at Saturday’s check presentation.
“The project has done a 180,” he said.
Earlier this year, negotiations were stalled because Tredyffrin and Willistown townships, the two municipalities that exercise zoning control over the rail yard, had different visions for the parcel’s development, according to officials.
DiBuonaventuro and Willistown Supervisor Norm MacQueen said those differences have been ironed out.
The $500,000 from the federal government will be put into use as soon as negotiations between the developer, the transit agencies and the municipalities involved in the transit center project are complete, according to Rich Burnfield, SEPTA’s chief financial officer.
“But it’s always good to have the money in place so that when the agreement is in place we don’t have to then get the money,” Burnfield said.
According to estimates officials involved in the project have given over the past months, the transit center project could get under way early next decade.
©Daily Local News 2008
