Published: April 21, 2006 02:09 am      

Revival revived?

The shell of Union Station still captures imagination.

With his purchase of the station last month, California craftsman Mark Davidson is picking up where others left off in the quest to restore what once was. A Christmastime 2005 ride on the Medina Railroad Museum Train Excursion convinced him he should try to get passenger trains running through the station again.

“I want to bring the station back to the glory that it was in 1888,” he says hopefully. “My wife thinks I’m nuts. I don’t know how I’m going to get it done — but determination is what makes things happen.”

Davidson is somewhat familiar with Union Station, having eyed it on and off for the past 15 years during visits here where his wife, then Michele Muscarella, grew up. Through Internet research and talks with family and local historians, he understands the history of Union Station revival is troubled. After the depot burned in the 1970s, campaigns by Greater Lockport Development Corporation and later the privately held Union Station Development Corporation fell under the weight of financial constraints.

Because the structure is a designated historic landmark, the requirements of government grant funding are exacting. True restoration carries a price tag that hovers around $1 million, an amount that private investors alone would be hard-pressed to recover. Whether the effort is private, public or both, “You need M-O-N-E-Y — and lots of it,” Community Development Director Bill Evert said.

GLDC gave Union Station recovery a whirl in the late 1980s, winning a $200,000 environmental grant from the state that required a match. The agency solicited private donations through a buy-a-brick initiative but raised less than $2,000. Ultimately it gave up the grant and returned the donations, Evert said.

In the 1990s, Brian Yaiser of Royalton bought the property and with two others formed Union Station Development Corporation to restore the exterior and establish a working museum and office space inside. A federal transportation grant of more than $500,000 was awarded to the City of Lockport for the project, but grant administrators balked when the restoration plan was revised to increase office space. Public funds have to be used for public, not private, purposes.

Ultimately, the city gave up that grant, too, and the shell has languished ever since while city planners talk about restoration as an abstract, maybe-someday goal.

Davidson wants to change that. A set dresser with Touchstone (Disney) productions who once worked in a roundhouse, he can look at the diminished structure and the future rising from the past.

“I see beyond what the building looks like now. I can see a restaurant, a coffee house, a place for the riders on the Medina train to (visit),” he said. “I can see (rail) memorabilia inside.”

Marty Phelps and Linda Klein, curators of Medina Railroad Museum, can see it too. They also were interested in buying Union Station but Klein said factors including financing didn’t come together in time. Having talked with Davidson when he rode the Excursion last year, and learning Davidson is from the same community Klein grew up in, they’d definitely be interested in working out a deal with him to sell tickets, board passengers and showcase some of the museum’s thousands of memorabilia pieces there.

“You can still see how beautiful the station was. We have photos and postcards of it in the museum,” she said. “(A deal) is certainly something we’d look into.”

Davidson acknowledges nothing’s going to happen overnight, but he’ll be eligible for retirement from Disney in two years and says he’s eager to move his family to Western New York. The cost of living in California is high and the quality of schooling for his three children, ages 8, 6 and 3, seems lacking. Having checked things out during visits with his wife’s family, he said, “the difference is like night and day.”

Davidson is looking for blueprints and other documents that will tell him more about the original station. Anyone who has information to share can write to him at 5857 Beck Ave., N. Hollywood, CA 91601.

A new Union Station Web site is being set up by his wife now, he said.

Contact Joyce Miles at 439-9222, Ext. 6245.