City makes plans to re-open Amtrak waiting station

 

[June 12, 2020] 

At the Tuesday night meeting of the Lincoln City Council aldermen agreed that it is time to re-open the local Amtrak Waiting Station. The station was closed in March after travel restrictions were placed on Illinois residents by Governor JB Pritzker.

Since March, Logan County Tourism Bureau staff have been working from home, and the visitor’s center has been closed. While LCTB staff have returned to the Depot Visitors Center to work in their office, the visitor’s center is still closed to the public.

There are two contingencies that the tourism board placed on the re-opening. The board wants to wait until the Amtrak Waiting Station is re-opened so that the visitor’s center will not become a substitute waiting station. In addition, the board utilizes a cleaning crew from Memorial Behavioral Health in Lincoln. The MBH has advised that they will be ready to return to work in July.

It should be noted that while the idea behind the visitor’s center is to invite people in to learn more about tourism in the community, the concern of the LCTB board is unnecessary loitering inside the building by those who have no interest in tourist attractions.

Tracy Welch and Steve Parrott serve as city liaisons to the LCTB. They brought the topic of the waiting station to the city council. While Amtrak authorized the shutdown of the waiting station, Lincoln Zoning Officer was recently told that it was at the discretion of the city as to when the station could re-open.

Tuesday night Woodhall told the council that he saw no reason to not open the station back up. He said there would be no possible way to enforce Covid-19 restrictions because the building is not manned, the best the city could do would be to place signage on the doors and in the building that Covid guidelines should be followed.

Woodhall said he would do as the council desires.

At the same time, he said there is some maintenance work that needs to be done in the building that would be easier to do if the station were still closed.

It was noted that the tourism bureau will definitely not re-open in June due to the lack of cleaning services, so Woodhall should have plenty of time to do the work he needs to do.

The council does not have to vote on this topic because they did not vote on the closure. Therefore, by nod of head the aldermen agreed to give Woodhall authority to re-open the station when he is ready, but no later than July 1st.

[Nila Smith]