GILROY
– Chances of bringing an antique train museum to Gilroy are
dwindling quickly now that Union Pacific Railroad says it doesn’t
want to sell a 12-acre downtown site to the project’s
developers.
Omaha-based Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley said Monday
that the railroad company has
”
no plans
”
and
”
no interest
”
in selling any of its Gilroy property between Ninth and Old
Gilroy streets.
GILROY – Chances of bringing an antique train museum to Gilroy are dwindling quickly now that Union Pacific Railroad says it doesn’t want to sell a 12-acre downtown site to the project’s developers.
Omaha-based Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley said Monday that the railroad company has “no plans” and “no interest” in selling any of its Gilroy property between Ninth and Old Gilroy streets. The largest railroad company in North America would rather sell a San Jose parcel because the Gilroy property could be crucial to future expansion of Union Pacific commuter services that would run to Hollister and Salinas.
“We just feel we may need that for future operational purposes,” Bromley said. “The operations department does not want us to sell any part of that site, because we may need all of it for extra tracks and other operating purposes.”
The latest public statement by the company flies in the face of behind-the-scenes dealings in recent weeks.
Train aficionado Rod Diridon, the project’s developer, said he and Sacramento-based real-estate officials from Union Pacific had contacted each other to schedule a December meeting. The meeting has yet to get scheduled, Diridon said, but the company had asked for alternative meeting dates to discuss a potential land deal.
“I think what you’re getting into is the middle of a negotiation, and I probably shouldn’t be talking too much about it at this point,” Diridon said Monday after a Dispatch reporter told him about Bromley’s statement.
“They’re taking a hard-line approach,” Diridon said. “It’s important for us to follow this through to conclusion. At the end of this, the property may be available to us or we may be denied. The bottom line is it’s theirs and we want it. We have to make it valuable for them to want to sell it.”
What has been called a win-win deal by former Mayor Tom Springer – a proponent of the museum project – involves Gilroy rezoning the site to a more valuable commercial designation. That action would theoretically give Union Pacific a larger tax break if it donates the land to the city.
Union Pacific could also use the remaining portion of the property for its own purposes in that scenario.
The city would then allow Diridon’s nonprofit organization, the California Trolley and Railroad Corporation, to develop and operate the museum using 3,000 tons of artifacts. The artifacts include antique locomotives, a six-stall roundhouse, a turntable and a water tower.
Diridon selected Gilroy, San Jose and Santa Clara as three potential sites for his pet project. However, since Diridon announced his plan to refurbish antique trains and historic railroad buildings – and use them to open a museum – he has called Gilroy the “ideal” spot for the project.
The Gilroy site is a 12-acre parcel (the museum would use at least two acres of the site) with access to existing railroad tracks, making special excursions on the antique trains possible. Diridon has said the San Jose and Santa Clara lots face obstacles – such as too far a proximity from train tracks and awkward lot size.
According to Bromley, the San Jose property is the only parcel the railroad company wants to sell. He said, like in Gilroy’s case, that Union Pacific’s Santa Clara property is not on the bargaining table.
Although UP officials in Sacramento may still be willing to meet with Gilroy officials and Diridon, Bromley said, “The answer they’re going to hear (at that meeting) is it’s not for sale.”
Union Pacific’s latest statement surprised Mayor Al Pinheiro whose typical role as Gilroy City Council’s consensus maker may be central to working out a deal with the railroad.
“I’d hate to see people make a decision without coming to the table,” Pinheiro said. “I believe in sitting at the table and seeing if there’s a win-win there for everybody.”
Not all recent developments with the train museum project spelled doom.
Thanks to a more lenient Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, city officials and downtown activists have until March to work out a plan to bring Diridon’s museum to Gilroy.
The county last month extended, by four months, a November deadline mandating Diridon move railroad artifacts out of the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds where they’ve resided since the late ’90s.
The extension buys Gilroy leaders more time to iron out a plan with Diridon that sets guidelines for how the artifacts get stored and sets a firm-as-possible timeline for constructing the museum.
Diridon has been searching for a museum site ever since Santa Clara County told him he had to. The county wants to use the valuable fairgrounds land for a more lucrative project, such as a hotel.
Gilroy City Councilmen have taken a lukewarm approach to the project despite their loud calls for downtown revitalization.
Councilman Roland Velasco, a policy advisor to Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, warned fellow council members in September 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.
And, Velasco last week said he has yet to receive economic forecasts for the museum Diridon promised him months ago.
However, despite his caution, Velasco said he is a potential advocate for the museum.
“I want to be absolutely clear with the public, I want the downtown to have a train museum because it could be an absolute boom there,” Velasco said. “I just have concerns about how to get to that point.”
One of Velasco’s concerns had to do with storage of the railroad artifacts during construction. The Councilman is worried the construction site will be an eyesore in a downtown that doesn’t need another one.
But the site will not look any worse than any other construction area in town and may look even better, said Gilroy Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Bill Lindsteadt.
Lindsteadt tried to find an off-site storage area in Gilroy that Diridon could use as his volunteers reconstruct and refurbish the artifacts. However, doing the work off-site means someone would have to pay a costly amount to deliver the finished product to the downtown location.
Back in August, UP spokeswoman Catherine Blackwell said the company would not likely sell any of its properties under their ledger value. The ledger value is the amount Union Pacific paid for their properties, back in the ’90s.
