For years, former Arcadia Town Supervisor Dick Colacino had envisioned the construction of a train station for high-speed passenger trains, such as Amtrak, in the Town of Arcadia. Now, with the Arcadia Town Board planning to clean up and sell the property at 1303 N. Main St. in Newark (where Colacino hoped to build the station) – that vision may be out of reach.
Newly-elected Arcadia Town Supervisor Chuck Verkey said that the town hopes someday the property will be bought with the intentions of turning it into something positive for the community. “Our intention is to sell it and let someone develop it,” Verkey said.
Before the land can be sold, though, it needs to be cleaned up. When the old structure was demolished, asbestos from the ceiling fell into the structure’s basement and mixed in with the soil.
Since cleaning and removing hazardous materials can be expensive, Verkey said they’d like to find funding for the project. Verkey reports that he has been working to get funding for the clean up since before he was supervisor, and that there is no timetable for when that funding might come through.
“You can’t put a target date on government,” Verkey said. “I talked to Senator [Mike] Nozzolio’s office, and they’re going to try and see if we can get some funding to get the remainder of the clean up done.”
Overall, Verkey and second Deputy Town Clerk Brenda Westcott, said that around $64,000 has been spent on the property, so far. According to Westcott, most of that money was spent on engineering fees, clean up fees, attorney fees and back taxes.
The idea for the train station never evolved past the point of a concept drawing, Verkey said, adding that Arcadia is “not in the business of building a train station.” Verkey also noted that the town couldn’t build one without the approval of Conrail, which owns the tracks, and Amtrak, the passenger service.
“If you don’t have that, then you can’t just build a train station because they’re not going to stop anyway, so what would be the point of wasting money to do that?” Verkey said.
On Thursday, Colacino said that he did – and still does – envision a train station being built in Arcadia, but he mostly wanted to remove the structure on the property to improve the town’s appearance.
“My main reason for tearing that down is because there were so many people that called me, like visitors to our area, and they’d say, ‘Don’t you have any code enforcement?’” Colacino said.
“It was a dilapidated property. The gateway from the north would be right down Route 88, and when you came over that bridge, it looked like hell.”
Colacino said that he felt proud of removing what he called an “eyesore” and that he had hoped to combine the clean up and the construction of the train station into one project that could be completed without any cost to the taxpayers.
“I didn’t go after it because some were condemning the town for getting that piece of property,” Colacino said. “But sometimes you have to do those things so that the rest of your property isn’t devalued.”
The idea for the train station never really grew, according to Westcott, because the rest of the town officials didn’t support it. “The train station was all Dick, it had nothing to do with the town,” Westcott said. “The town was not moving forward with it at all.”
Verkey said that any additional costs for the clean up are unknown at this point. He said some numbers have been discussed but wouldn’t say what they were. According to him, the town will be forced to come up with a new plan if funding can’t be acquired.
“We’ll try another route, but we’re not sure where that’s going yet,” he said.
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