(The Associated Press circulated the following on June 11.)
BALTIMORE —Two lawsuits pit Amtrak against a developer in a fight over the use of land under a former parcel post building near Baltimore’s railroad station.
The disagreement that led to the lawsuits, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, began last year when Amtrak agreed to move its equipment off the land to allow Railway Express LLC to work underneath. Amtrak says the developers put up a locked, chain link fence around the property and said the land would be used for private parking.
Amtrak wants $5 million in compensatory damages and a temporary injunction against Railway Express before July 1.
Railway Express, which developed the 79-year-old Railway Express Building into a retail and residential building, says it sent Amtrak its plans to redevelop the area for parking. The developers, who bought the building in 2005, reopened it in December after $16 million in renovations.
The developer says it spent a significant amount of money to add an elevator and do environmental remediation. Railway Express claims Amtrak was aware of its plans to use the property for parking and sent some of the contractors to a railway safety school in Philadelphia.
The 77,000-square-foot Railway Express Building was a sorting and processing center for railroad parcels. It was built with the understanding the ground underneath would be used by the railroads running out of the city’s Penn Station, according to a 1946 air rights agreement. The building is 22 feet above the ground on concrete pilings.
Baltimore acquired the building in 1973, and it was used by the housing department until 2003.