The City of Tomah’s Amtrak Station is slated to receive $509,000 in stimulus money to improve the aging railroad depot in the center of the city.

Tomah City Administrator Jim Bialecki said Tuesday that the Amtrak Station will receive the funding in federal railroad administration grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The depot sits on a 61-acre property owned by Canadian Pacific Railway, which has been in contact with Tomah city officials about selling the property along both sides of Superior Avenue in the center of the city.

The Tomah Amtrak Station is one of eight stations in Wisconsin. The depot has seen steady ridership increases throughout the past decade. According to Amtrak, 9,477 riders got on or off a train in Tomah from October 2006 through September 2007. The depot is also a potential stop for a proposed high-speed passenger rail service between Chicago and the Twin Cities — via Tomah, La Crosse and Winona, Minn.— that could begin in the next five years. Tomah Mayor Ed Thompson said that improvements to the depot may help make high-speed rail a reality in Tomah.

“The high-speed rail is still in the works, and with half of a million (dollars) in here, it looks like there is some emphasis on rail in Tomah,” Thompson said. “This is not small money. Hopefully it means a brand new depot.”

The possibility of obtaining the railroad property has been a priority interest of the city’s newly formed Long-Range Planning Committee since February. Canadian Pacific is interested in selling the land and announced in May that it had hired Vandewalle and Associates of Madison to develop a plan and market the property. Bialecki said that improvements to the depot would be beneficial for possible development of the land.

See Depot, page 3A

“I think the community will be quite pleased to hear this,” Bialecki said. “Recently, there have been some complaints regarding the facility, and I think this will promote redevelopment in that area.”

Representatives from Vandewalle and Associates will update the city’s Long-Range Planning Committee on its progress planning uses for the land in July. Bialecki said that he will know more about plans for improvements to the depot after the July meeting and that he expects the stimulus dollars to make an impact.

“I think this will be a big benefit for Vandewalle,” Bialecki said. “They know, as well as we do, the impact this can have on that area. I think this could be an anchor for development.”