BEACON — Metro-North Railroad has drafted three proposals for turning its train station along the Hudson River here into a model of functional urban design, the Times Herald-Record reported.
The elaborate renderings, displayed at the Beacon City Court House last week, recast the busy train station as a gateway to the Hudson Valley for visitors as well as commuters.
As viewed from the river, the plans show a parking garage nestled into the steep slope, surrounded with clustered parking areas – and all of it softened and obscured through generous use of trees and shrubs. A rooftop garden is only one of many possible treatments for the garage.
Walkways abound to connect the station – and buses and ferries – to the city and other riverfront attractions, most notably the Dia:Beacon Museum of Contemporary Art, scheduled to open next year.
A station house that recalls the buildings of old on the site is a possibility, not just to provide commuters with a ticket office, waiting area and bathrooms but also to give tourists an information center and restaurant.
“We think this is great,” said Joseph Braun, the Beacon city administrator. “It’s the new Metro-North, less bureaucratic, more willing to work with the community and make their facilities an asset to the community. We have some issues with these plans but we can work them out if they’re true to their commitment that this will be an open process.”
Part of Braun’s concern is that the plans still call for creating parking capacity for 1,800 cars. The station now has a 1,000-car lot to serve 1,700 customers and a pending $11 million upgrade will add another 380 spaces.
The congestion that this volume of traffic – more than half of it from Orange County – brings to the city is a sore point among local residents. They are eager for ferry service between Beacon and Newburgh to resume and take some cars off their streets and for Metro-North and the state Department of Transportation to rethink traffic flow to and from the station.
Metro-North based the renderings on ideas and suggestions culled from a series of meetings with public and private agencies in Dutchess County and the Hudson Valley during the past year. The 75 or so people who attended the workshop last Wednesday were encouraged to fill out comment cards and attach any alterations to the designs on tracing paper.
“The designs are lovely,” said Woodbury Supervisor Sheila Conroy, who attended the workshop with her deputy, Geraldine Gianzero. “I’m disappointed Metro-North isn’t showing as much creativity in working with our community as it is with Beacon. I’d like to have the same opportunity for the Harriman station.”
The town opposes Metro-North’s money-saving plan to put a new train station at Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley rather than expand at its existing station in Harriman.
The railroad’s next step in Beacon will be to review the public’s comments and then meet with stakeholders and refine the proposals.
Sometime next year, a preferred plan will be presented to the public. Once a consensus on a long-range concept is achieved, Metro-North will start to seek funding.
There are no cost estimates for the proposals. By comparison, the parking garage at the Poughkeepsie train station cost Metro-North $18 million. There is no timetable for construction.
Regardless, the railroad is moving ahead with the $11 million worth of improvements that were approved for Beacon earlier this year. The long-awaited addition of a left-turn lane to Beekman Street at Route 9D will be done first, perhaps in a matter of months. The other work will be designed in the coming year and built in 2004-05.