By Joseph Bell

Staff Writer

Main Street manager Michelle Bogacki reported last night that restoration efforts to the Pennsy train station located along North Broad Street continues.
“We’ve been working on the Pennsy train station, ‘we’ being a couple of volunteers and myself,” Bogacki said. “The railroad station did provide the funds for plywood, paint and materials.
“I provided the volunteer hours and we’re replacing the plywood to the windows and just trying to get it a little more cosmetically appealing to our entranceway into downtown, which I think was one of our ultimate goals.”
According to Bogacki, while the property is marketable, the railroad routinely keeps the easement to the property as most railroads do in those situations as it is a live line.
“Basically, our focus was just to get it a little bit more cosmetically friendly,” Bogacki said. “They were very cooperative. Part of the overhang is still part of the blight to the building.
“As we continue to work on that, whether we replace it continually around the building or continue to remove it on the other half of the building, the focus will be to replace the roofing.
“(Railroad officials) are not in favor in putting full amount of funds to replace that. The focus for their funds is rail development. They’ve been very cooperative at this point and we hope to continue this relationship.”
Light-Up Night is scheduled for this Friday night in downtown Ridgway with an appearance by Santa Claus from 6-8 p.m. on the Elk County Courthouse lawn.
“We’ll start kicking off our ‘shop local’ campaign again,” Bogacki said. “Our fall festival was good, overall, with the weather and we’ll have the same emphasis to shop local.
“A newsletter will be going out with the chamber to emphasis the statistics of how much further your local dollar goes to local economy and so forth.”
Bogacki also reported several winter projects in the works, including sidewalk cleaning and shoveling.