(rshsdepot) Westchester Avenue (Bronx, NY)

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From Metro.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
 
New life for Bronx rail station?
by Amy Zimmer / Metro New York 
 
(http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/New_life_for_Bronx_rail_station/10810.html#email) NOV 20, 2007 
BRONX. Can the Cass Gilbert-designed Westchester Avenue Railroad Station —  
abandoned since 1937 — be transformed into a grand entrance to the Bronx River  
and its new greenway?  
That’s the hope of local group Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice — one  
that’s complicated and costly.  
“It could be a beautiful gateway from Westchester Avenue to the new park,”  
said Tawkiyah Jordan, senior director for community programs at Youth  
Ministries.  
The boarded-up station that belongs to Amtrak overlooks the new Concrete  
Plant Park, which is expected to open in summer 2008. After months of pestering  
Amtrak, Youth Ministries was able to bring in architects to look at the space. 
 
“It’s a building that would break your heart to lose,” said Joan Byron, of  
the Pratt Center for Community Development. “But it’s about as challenging a  
site as they come.”  
It’s “fragile,” with an exposed steel lattice work embedded with terra 
cotta,  Byron said. “The steel is expanding and exfoliating, like little potato 
chips  flaking off, and that’s damaging the terra cotta.”  
It would cost millions to renovate the roughly 2,700 square foot building  
above rail tracks. “It’s like the size of a ranch house,” Byron said, “and  
that’s one of the challenges because it can’t generate revenue that would pay  
for its development debt.”  
Residents have pitched turning it into a Bronx River ecology center or a  
place for renting fishing gear and canoes. Some envision a holistic heath care  
and reproductive rights clinic there or a food pantry or restaurant.  
Linda Cox, executive director of the Bronx River Alliance, the public-private 
 partnership overseeing the Bronx River Greenway, said any project would be “
a  daunting” undertaking.  
“We need a closer look at the costs, the benefits and if it’s even feasible  
for the building to be made available,” she said.  
Adam Liebowitz, of community group the Point, said some locals want a hip-hop 
 museum.  
“The South Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop and to have this place all  
graffitied up in the heart of the neighborhood could be great,” Liebowitz said.  
If not, “I think Youth Ministries would make sure it’s something the whole  
community has a stake in.” 



**************************************Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest 
products.
(http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001)

=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org
To Unsubscribe: http://lists.railfan.net/rshsdepot-photo/unsub.html

------------------------------

End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1636
********************************

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