Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 18, 1993 TAG: 9305180180
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Pulaski Main Street is trying to establish a farmers' market on the property, which is giving completion a new urgency.
It also raises the question of what the town will do with its empty building on the property that once housed a bus and taxi station. Pulaski Town Council is expected to appoint a committee of town officials and private citizens tonight at 7 to study the question and make a recommendation soon.
The options seem to be tearing it down or renovating it for some other use, such as a headquarters for local railroad club members or for restrooms when a state park is extended to the property.
Assistant Town Manager Rob Lyons estimated that materials to complete the interior train station renovation would cost more than $10,000. Labor would be provided by volunteers or town crews.
"I think we can go ahead and finish the inside of the building. We've got it two-thirds of the way finished already," Mayor Gary Hancock said Saturday at a joint meeting of the town's finance and utilities committees.
Part of the job also will include landscaping the property around it. But that cannot be done until it is decided whether the former bus station building will be kept or removed.
Councilman Don Crispin said he opposed the idea of public restrooms at the site, where he said transients probably would trash them.
Crispin also asked whether the town or state parks division would be responsible for policing and maintaining the section of New River Trail State Park that will be brought into town. Hancock said the state will have that responsibility.
Regardless of what use a committee might recommend for the former bus station, Hancock said, there is no reason to wait on completing the train station interior.
Public officials in towns and cities from Roanoke to Bristol are seeking ways to persuade Amtrak to put a rail line through this region into Tennessee.
"The one thing we would need is a station. We're well prepared for that," Hancock said. "It's certainly not a certainty . . . We'd like to see it happen, and we're going to do everything we can to make it happen."
A fund-raising drive to renovate and restore the station started in 1989, after the landmark had been given to the town by Norfolk Southern Corp. The town will consider possible sources of money to make up what has not been raised to finish the restoration.
When complete, it will house a museum, offices for the Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce and a visitors welcome center. It also will mark one end of the linear New River Trail State Park, to be extended two more miles into Pulaski to stop at the former depot.
Funding for the extension was part of the bond issue package for parks and recreation approved by state voters in a referendum last November. New River Trail State Park is on former railroad right-of-way donated to the state by Norfolk Southern.
The station has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places since being given to the town.
by CNB