(rshsdepot) New London, CT

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From The Day.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
Transportation Communications Newsletter
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
COG Committee To Look at Role Of Union Station 


By: Scott Ritter  
New London Landmark`s Future As Regional transportation Center On Tuesday`s  
Agenda The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments is turning its  
attention to New London`s privately owned and financially struggling Union  
Station, appointing a committee to ponder the landmark`s future as a regional  
transportation hub. The council`s involvement signals a fresh push to address  the 
financial and operational burdens that the building`s owners, Todd O`Donnell  
and Barbara Timken, continue to wrestle with. The owners sought the council`s 
 help this spring.  
The committee will hold its first meeting Tuesday. More than a dozen people  
representing Union Station, New London, Amtrak, Southeast Area Transit and 
other  Union Station users have been invited. Lawmakers, state Department of  
Transportation officials and representatives of the Cross Sound and Fishers  
Island ferries were also asked to attend.  
“We`re going to all sit down and try to make this thing work out in  
everybody`s favor,” said Bozrah First Selectman Keith Robbins, the COG chairman.  “
We`ll get there. It will take some arm-twisting and some compromise, but we`ll  
get there.”  
Mark McClanan, the general manager of SEAT, said Union Station is a key  
transportation hub that ties together the trains, ferries, buses and taxis that  
serve the region. He said he`ll be at next week`s meeting.  
“It`s too important to not have everyone sit and at least think about it,”  
McClanan said.  
•••••  
It all comes down to money.  
Because Union Station is privately owned, it can`t raise revenues through  
taxes or federal transportation grants. Rents collected from its two tenants,  
Amtrak and Greyhound Bus Line, are its only income. Combined, the two lease  
about 4,500 square feet of the 27,000-square-foot building.  
Amtrak is on a month-to-month lease, and there`s a “strong likelihood” that  
the rail service provider will move out of the station lobby, O`Donnell told 
the  council in a four-page letter in April.  
Greyhound leases fewer than 1,500 square feet, but its buses use more than  
7,000 square feet outside that generates no rent. Union Station`s restrooms,  
meant for Amtrak passengers, are also used by SEAT riders, ferry passengers,  
taxi drivers and others. SEAT has a kiosk and benches at Union Station but  
doesn`t pay rent.  
The owners said they want to preserve Union Station as a regional  
transportation center. They have suggested a public-private partnership, which  could “
create an effective, safe and vibrant transportation center that  
simultaneously accommodates public transportation users and rent-paying  tenants.”  
Robbins, the COG chairman, said one option the committee will explore is the  
creation of a transit district around the station to raise revenues. He also  
noted that the state Department of Transportation owns some transit stations, 
a  step that could be taken in New London as long as the city was compensated 
for  lost tax revenue.  
City Manager Richard M. Brown, New London`s representative on the Council of  
Governments, said the station currently pays property taxes that the  
cash-strapped city can ill afford to lose.  
“We have to look at whatever options that may be out there,” he said  
Thursday, adding that “whatever happens down there shouldn`t result in the city  of 
New London losing money.”  
Still, he welcomed COG`s move, saying a regional approach may be the best way 
 to bring money to the train station. “I think the region is starting to talk 
 more and more about regional solutions, and I think that`s important for all 
of  us,” Brown said.  
•••••  
Amtrak said it will send a representative to the meeting. “We will be there  
to participate and to answer questions about our priorities and needs at New  
London, and to be helpful” to the council, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black.  
A Greyhound spokesman couldn`t immediately determine whether an official from 
 the bus line would attend.  
There is no specific agenda for Tuesday`s meeting. But Robbins said one issue 
 that needs to be resolved quickly is ongoing, costly litigation stemming 
from an  abandoned bid by New London to build a pedestrian bridge to get ferry 
passengers  over the tracks. The city used its eminent domain powers to take 
some of Union  Station`s land, prompting the station`s owners to file suit three 
years ago.  
Union Station, designed by famed American architect Henry Hobson Richardson,  
sits on a half-acre site at the foot of State Street. The red brick building, 
 built in 1888, is on the National Register of Historic Places.  
Preservationists saved it in the early 1970s from a plan by the New London  
Redevelopment Agency to demolish it. Union Station has been under private  
ownership since 1975, when the architectural firm Anderson Notter Associates  
bought it with the help of nonprofit Union Railroad Station Trust. It got a  major 
overhaul in 2003.  
Efforts in recent years to generate more revenue for the station have  
faltered. In 2004, the Children`s Museum of Southeastern Connecticut considered  a 
move there. Earlier, the state pondered opening a museum and visitors center  
that would tell about historic sites that were to be featured in the Thames  
Maritime Heritage Park, which never got beyond the planning stages. 

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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