GILROY
– City Council is inviting Rod Diridon – the
”
father
”
of Silicon Valley mass transit
– back to Gilroy so he can re-pitch his idea for an antique
train museum, this time to the full city dais.
GILROY – City Council is inviting Rod Diridon – the “father” of Silicon Valley mass transit – back to Gilroy so he can re-pitch his idea for an antique train museum, this time to the full city dais.
Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask Diridon to a special Sept. 22 meeting, at 6 p.m., to discuss his pet project’s timeline, scope of work and funding sources. If successful, the session could lay a foundation between Diridon and Gilroy that is necessary to bring the museum here instead of competing cities San Jose and Santa Clara.
“I don’t know if I can say ‘move forward’ or ‘stop with this,’ but I certainly am excited about this and the potential it has for the downtown,” Councilman Al Pinheiro said. “I’d like Mr. Diridon to be here so he could answer some of our questions and concerns.”
Councilmembers want to encourage the train and trolley aficionado to take the lead on what could be the wild card of the project – convincing Union Pacific railroad to donate a downtown Gilroy parcel Diridon himself called “ideal.”
“It’s a chore working with them,” City Administrator Jay Baksa said of Union Pacific. “We had experiences with them with small pieces of property, and it took three to four years just to buy the property, let alone trying to get them to donate this one.”
City Council showed a combination of get-the-ball-rolling interest and one-step-at-a-time caution over a plan that would bring a traditional train museum and working antique rail car system to Gilroy at an infant stage of local downtown revitalization efforts.
Councilman Roland Velasco, a policy advisor to Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, warned fellow council members that Diridon is making his museum plans based on funding grants that have not yet been won and volunteer contractors who rarely stick to firm work schedules.
Velasco produced county documents that describe the fairgrounds as being in a blighted condition since the train artifacts, roughly 3,000 rusting tons of them, are being stored there.
“There’s a reason why the county told him he has to be out of the fairgrounds by Nov. 1,” Velasco said. “What I don’t want is Gilroy to become a dumping ground for three tons of material the county didn’t want.”
Over the last four years, Velasco said, Diridon has come in front of the Board of Supervisors or county committees 13 times regarding conditions the county had imposed on him to see his project through.
“I want to see Gilroy have this project,” Velasco said. “But I want to know the financing is squared away and there is a tangible, realistic timeline that Council and the community can see.”
The Council’s actions follow a letter of interest sent last week by Mayor Tom Springer to Diridon which stated a Union Pacific-owned property on the west side of Alexander Avenue, just north of Tenth Street and east of the existing train station, is where the museum should be located.
The city has expressed interest in rezoning, at least part of, the roughly 12-acre site to a more valuable commercial designation. The move would theoretically give Union Pacific a larger tax break if it donates the land.
Thus far, Union Pacific representatives have given less than a lukewarm reception to the donation idea, calling it “doubtful” the company would break with its property here since transit could expand in Gilroy.
In Gilroy’s favor, Union Pacific also owns, and would prefer to keep, the proposed sites in San Jose and Santa Clara.
“I think UP just got caught off guard when they were asked about this in the press,” Mayor Tom Springer said. “Rod only had a preliminary conversation with one person at UP, so no one has really gone in and negotiated this yet.”
Diridon, who has a San Jose train station named after him, has been searching for a museum site ever since he was told to find an alternate site by Santa Clara County. The museum would house train artifacts, such as restored locomotives, a pre-deisel roundhouse and a water tower. The artifacts are currently stored at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds and are supposed to be moved by November so the county can move forward with more lucrative plans for the high value property.
One idea is to build a hotel at the fairgrounds.
