Delay approved in Ardmore train station project

The Lower Merion Township Board of Commissioners voted Wednesday to accept a developer's request to delay by a year all deadlines for the long-awaited Ardmore Transit Center.

By a vote of 10-2 with two absent, the township's governing body accepted developer Carl Dranoff's request to begin the $100 million project in earnest next June 30 instead of late this month.

Dranoff had notified the township June 10 that he could not meet the June 30 deadline for acquisition of Ardmore's train station and an adjacent parking lot, site of the publicly funded part of the project.

Dranoff said he learned in December of Amtrak's aim to upgrade its electrification system a decade from now. That would mean wedging catenary towers - which carry overhead wires - into the edges of the planned garage.

At their meeting in the township building on Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore, two of the 14 commissioners spoke emphatically against the project.

Lewis F. Gould said, "It is time to say this project has a very, very small likelihood of going forward. In order to save the resources of our taxpayers, it should come to an end."

But Commissioner Marck E. Taylor said every real estate project was "an exercise in calculated risk. I believe this one is worth taking."

The vote by the board sitting as a whole followed lively discussion on what it acknowledged was a gap in funding the public portion of the project.

Last year, Dranoff and township leaders said they were counting on $5.8 million from the Federal Transit Administration, plus $6 million in state funding for the garage, $10 million from SEPTA, and $250,000 from Montgomery County.

"There is a gap, but I believe we owe it to Ardmore, to the Ardmore business community, and to the people of this township to make a go of this," Taylor said.

Dranoff did not speak at Wednesday's meeting.

SEPTA said early in June that it was putting off indefinitely a list of capital projects, including the transit center, and that it didn't know when its $10 million would be available.

The project also includes a privately funded component with a mini-Main Street featuring stores and a five-story apartment building between the tracks and the rear of stores facing Lancaster Avenue.

Commissioner Philip S. Rosenzweig warned that Dranoff was the second developer to take on the project.

"I don't know if there will be a third developer," Rosenzweig said. "Any developer would be nuts to be the third developer."