Re: GE Gear Plant - Lynn
GE has already moved their perimeter fence back to the other side of the tracks. They are the ones who cleared the site and are leasing the property to the developer, so I don't think GE has any remaining security concerns beyond the day to day operational of manning a gate with a checkpoint which they already do now.
As mentioned before it is already a commuter rail stop, so it is already required to be ADA compliant. What we are taking about is whether they are going to make it a nicer commuter rail stop, but that shouldn't delay anything.
Sounds like we are talking about another year for environmental review and to get permits and start construction.
Oh, no. He absolutely wants to expedite building a full-blown new stop adjacent to River Works. This isn't just a pretty-up job of the existing 1-car slab of pavement. Any site access work and prettying-up that Patsios pays for to get existing River Works open to the public in as-is condition is work directly serving the cleanroomed stop he aims to get built there. The cleanroomed stop would be shifted no more than 200+ ft. north clear of the switches for the GE yard, and so the northerly tip of the 800 ft. full-highs reached up the access road out far enough (i.e. near the current helipad) for easier Lynnway access and room to shiv in a kiss-and-ride.
His "Lynnport" isn't what many others have tossed around over the years for a "West Lynn" replacement of RW (last brought up for the 2024 Indigo announcement). All of those WL concepts shifted the stop clear away from GE property and onto T property inside the ex-Saugus Branch wye at Commercial St. and the trail head for the Lynn segment of the Bike to The Sea trail. Exact same location of the pre-195(9?) Boston & Maine West Lynn CR station. Patsios is looking to rebuild "Lynnport" as a whole new River Works
at River Works-proper using his property for access in lieu of GE's. Big distinction from all the other proposals. He can get started on all the site access and prettying-up once the sign-offs for trackside access are clear, but 100% of that work serves his eventual cleanroomed, full-ADA Lynnport stop with regulation-size full-high platforms.
The only reason he's looking for any state money is the same reason New Balance did: the T is the only party allowed to touch the actual tracks and build the actual to-spec full-high platform. That's the set of negotiations that gets the new platform built. The 'bridge era' where the existing slab of pavement has to get used traces the outer limits of how much site access work he can do himself before needing to square platform design with the T and hash out the exact to-the-inch platform placement that doesn't foul access to any reactivated GE freight sidings.
The only reason he can't announce right now, on 1/3/2016, for the as-is River Works re-use is not the location of the security fence but the all-around GE land ownership giving GE some rights of first refusal access considerations that still haven't been 100% squared. Same stuff that has made past attempts at opening River Works to the public a fruitless cause, even when the interested parties have offered to pay for the modified security fence. It's much more a low-motivation thing for GE than a leverage ploy where they're looking to get paid. GE's got no money it can make out of the station and has already made all its money off Patsios with the land sale. So they're simply unmotivated to return a simple phone call. Chronic unresponsiveness is unfortunately a GE corporate trait when it comes to community outreach. My family lives right by their big Plainville, CT plant (yes, same one with the relocation rumors) at ground zero of that downtown, where the plant is right next to the town high school and some new upzoned office redev. It's the same thing in Connecticut as it is in Lynn; something as simple as Plainville asking their permission to do a little streetscaping impacting a meaningless strip of GE's front lawn gets met with complete non-response for months/years until they finally give a nonchalant OK. It shouldn't by any logic always have to take so long, but it just does as S.O.P. with that corporation.
They'll come around because it's a dirt-simple up/down decision they just need to signal an affirmative on. But GE always moves at a glacial pace and there's nothing anyone can really do to expedite it. Patsios today just doesn't have firm-enough answers from them that give him a ballpark timetable he can publicly quote for advancing to next step. That's all this is...not a real blocker, just the same corporate sloth everybody in Lynn knows well in advance to be prepared for.
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Re: accessibility. . .
As long as the stop is private-only, the only accessibility regs it's held to are GE's own for a private employment facility of that class/size. i.e. They certainly have to have the requisite wheelchair ramps to the office entrances like most employers, but the plant floor doesn't qualify and they aren't nearly huge enough for employee transit to come into play. The T isn't on-the-clock at all for counting ridership and scheduled stops measured against those ADA compliance triggers unless GE allows public-access. So it's not their problem, not their solution until that change happens. Obviously if an as-is River Works gets approval to open to the public it would have to have swelling ridership for a bunch of years after before it gets anywhere near those ADA triggers that EGE alluded to. Its status as exempt flag stop like the Silver Hills and Prides Crossings of the system wouldn't change instantaneously, even though unlike those others RW has for decades been quietly served by vast majority of Newburyport/Rockport schedules.
