(The following story by Dee Dixon appeared on the Beaumont Enterprise website on August 19, 2009.)
BEAUMONT, Texas — Beaumont’s plans remain on schedule to build a new $1.25 million Amtrak depot off 11th Street despite Kansas City Southern’s offer to the city of a second location near downtown.
The railroad offered a location west of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, but city officials are not interested in it.
In an Aug. 6 letter to Mayor Becky Ames, KCS executive vice president Warren K. Erdman explained the city’s first choice of a downtown location at the end of Jefferson Street off College Street is not ideal by Amtrak’s standards.