Sunday, May 10, 2009

Train station project out to bid

The Elizabethtown Train Station project has gone out to bid, with the intent of opening sealed bids at 11 a.m. June 12. In the bid advertisement, the borough says "it is the intent of Elizabethtown to award the contract on the basis of the lowest bid determined using the base bid plus the alternates selected to utilize all of the available funding."

Elizabethtown is in line to receive $9.3 million in federal stimulus funding money to pay for the project, which has been in the planning stages for the past 10 years.

Borough Manager Pete Whipple told Borough Council last week that once the winning bid is selected, shovels will hit the ground in August. The entire project will take 12 to 14 months and will include paving of the parking lot. In addition, the borough recently purchased a dilapidated building in the 400 block of East High Street, across from White Oak Mills, that will be torn down and the property used for satellite parking.

I have to say, as one member of Borough Council, that seeing this project come to fruition is incredibly exciting for the community. Credit goes to previous members of Borough Council who worked to get the project to this stage and to Whipple for his tenacity working with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in the past year to secure funding.