(rshsdepot) Pawtucket-Central Falls, RI

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From today's Pawtucket Times.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
Photos at:  _http://www.hopetunnel.org/subway/pcf/_ 
(http://www.hopetunnel.org/subway/pcf/) 
 
 
City hopes train depot can reopen with MBTA study of train station 

PAWTUCKET -- Since it stopped punching tickets in the 1960s, the  
Pawtucket-Central Falls Train Depot has been a flea market, a Pentecostal church  and a 
refuge for the homeless.  
These days, it’s attracting more high-profile attention.  
On Friday morning, more than a dozen men and women in business suits,  
clutching leather portfolios, took a guided tour of the 90-year-old brick and  steel 
behemoth. They were architectural and engineering consultants, responding  to 
a request issued by the City of Pawtucket for a very important and expensive  
feasibility study.  
``Enter at your own risk,`` said tour guide and City Planner Michael Cassidy. 
 ``The city of Pawtucket is not responsible if you break your leg.``  
Eventually, one of these smartly dressed contractors would be hired to figure 
 out how the massive building could be restored, converted into a modern MBTA 
 commuter rail stop and made to coexist with the $40 million  
residential/commercial development blitz proposed by the depot’s owner,  Memphis-based 
developer SMPO Properties.  
When SMPO purchased the 3.4-acre depot property for $1.4 million in July, a  
debate over the prospect of restoring the historic structure versus tearing it 
 down had been raging for months. That debate continues today, despite SMPO’s 
 announcement that an MBTA stop would have to share the property with a 
pharmacy,  an auto parts store and 150 residential units.  
SMPO executive Oscar Seelbinder said he had no problem preserving the depot  
building as long as state and local government helped him shoulder the burden. 
 ``I’m not going to go in there and spend a million dollars (for 
architectural  and engineering experts) to see if we can save the building,`` Seelbinder 
was  quoted as saying. Now, utilizing state-secured money, the city of 
Pawtucket has  set out to do just that.  
Even though the interior of the train depot has long since been stripped of  
its valuable stonework, the consultants gasped as they entered the main hall,  
with its steel-girded 40-foot ceilings, skylights and floor-to-ceiling 
windows.  Cleanup crews had scrubbed most of the building clean, but several relics 
from  the depot flea market and the depot itself, remained. A torn rice paper 
parasol  hung on the wall, to the right of the depot’s old snack bar. The menu 
board  depicted otherworldly prices: 50 cents for a cup of coffee; $1.75 for 
a meatball  sandwich.  
After the depot tour, several consultants followed Cassidy to an alternate  
site, a derelict, trackside property behind Union Webbing Company. Some elected 
 to descend to the tracks, where Amtrak and DOT were busy reconstructing the  
freight rail, two feet lower.  
Gazing up at the sprawling brick structure, straddling the tracks and two  
cities -- despite blocked-up windows and crumbling stonework, the tourists were  
clearly in awe.  
``They just don’t make them like that anymore,`` someone in the crowd  said.

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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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