Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411140096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: DANVILLE LENGTH: Medium
A train station gutted by a 1992 fire will undergo a $1 million face lift so that it can house the first satellite center of the Science Museum of Virginia, city and state officials said.
The renovation project also will convert the station into a loading area for Amtrak's Crescent line rail service come next fall.
``This building is historic and was significant in the past culture of Danville, but it will hopefully be just as significant in the future,'' Linwood Wright, the city's vice mayor, told a crowd of 200 people gathered for a ceremony Friday at the former Southern Railway station.
Work will begin this month on the project, which will return the building to the way it looked in the early 1920s.
The train station renovation is the first of a two-part rehabilitation project slated for the area. The second phase includes turning the old Southern freight warehouse into a marketplace, creating additional parking, and turning an old trestle into a bicycle and pedestrian trail to a local park.
The science center, a branch of the Richmond science museum, is the first key to continued commercial development in the Tobacco Warehouse District, City Manager Ray Griffin said.
The center should pique the younger generation's interest in the sciences, Wright said.
``If we can lead one child to a career in the sciences, then the center will be worth far more than the price we will have paid,'' he said.
Endeavour shuttle astronaut Jeff Wisoff was at Friday's ceremony. He contributed a photograph of the area taken from the orbiting shuttle and a medallion he wore on his last trip through space to the new science center.
The medallion contains a piece of wood from the train station, cotton and a piece of tobacco to commemorate the city's major employers. The medallion will become part of a permanent space exhibit to be housed at the center.
The science center will help inspire the next generation of astronauts and scientists, said Wisoff, a Norfolk native.
``It is the children that will use this facility that will become the astronauts of tomorrow and will tackle even tougher problems than we have faced,'' he said.
by CNB