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Playback Tredyffrin, Willistown shape plan for rail yard (The following story by Benjamin Y. Lowe appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on March 31.) PHILADELPHIA -- With the cleanup of the contaminated Paoli rail yards almost complete, Tredyffrin and Willistown officials are to begin laying out a more detailed vision for the future of the Main Line community. The redevelopment, which includes a new train station for Amtrak trains and SEPTA's R5 line, is Chester County's top transportation priority and is expected to include office buildings and retail stores. "The whole idea is to put something at that site which will encourage use of the R5 rail line into Philadelphia or out to the site, or even from the western part of the county to that site," said Wayne Clapp, assistant director of the Chester County Planning Commission. "We want to see this happen." Tredyffrin and Willistown have scheduled a combined public meeting tonight to remind the community about their proposal for the site, the Paoli Community Master Plan, and to begin work on zoning changes that they expect to complete by the end of the year. Officials in both townships said they were working toward a unified zoning district linking the two municipalities. Tonight's public meeting starts at 7 at General Wayne Elementary School, 20 Devon Rd., Malvern. Chester County, Clapp said, considers the rail-yard redevelopment a higher priority than highway construction. Clapp could not say how much money the project would cost. Amtrak is expected to request proposals from developers over the next several months. Willistown Township Manager Hugh J. Murray Sr. said it could be at least a year before a more concrete plan emerges. "We want the people in that area to get an idea of what the plan is," he said. "We may get some people who say this is crazy, but this is very conceptual - nothing is written in stone." Tredyffrin and Willistown have waited nearly two decades to get to this point. Clapp, of the Chester County Planning Commission, said his most optimistic forecast was to have construction start within five years, though he said it could be longer given the number of agencies involved. In addition to the townships, the redevelopment will require cooperation from the EPA, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Chester County, SEPTA, and Amtrak, the landowner. "We need to finish up the cleanup, and we are in frequent communication with those two townships over the future use of the property," said Cliff Black, an Amtrak spokesman. "There is no timeline for development." Amtrak and SEPTA agreed to a cleanup plan in 1999. SEPTA's R5 train, which runs along what was once the Main Line of Public Works, is the agency's most popular ride into the city, a spokesman said. The four-year-old Paoli Community Master Plan includes the area on Route 30 between Route 252 and Paoli Memorial Hospital. The plan's centerpiece is a new train station, though it also addresses proposed uses for the railcar-storage yard bordered by Central and Lancaster Avenues. The 30-acre parcel and a 400-acre watershed to the north were declared a Superfund site in 1990, five years after PCBs, a carcinogen, were found in the soil. The EPA has said most of the pollution came from chemicals used to cool railcar transformers. "It wasn't necessarily a technically complex project in terms of the cleanup," said Kelley Chase, the site's EPA project manager. "But it was difficult with the various parties involved. There was a lot of litigation between the rail companies, and that complicated moving ahead with the cleanup." Chase said the site was not cleaned up enough for residential use, though it could be if a developer wanted to build homes there. She said she expected Amtrak to finish cleanup work by the summer. "This is a chance to seek great improvements for the Paoli train station," said Mimi Gleason, Tredyffrin's assistant township manager. "We also think that this is an opportunity to see better development around the Paoli district." Thursday, March 31, 2005 © 1997-2010 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen

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