BRUNSWICK
Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition will decide whether it will continue to participate in the NNEPRA Layover Advisory Committee when its executive board meets today.
“It’s something we will discuss in context of whether or not we send somebody as our representative,” Brunswick West Chairperson Bob Morrison said Friday.
A July 24 meeting of the group turned contentious when Brunswick West members vented their frustrations to Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, before stating they had no interest in discussing any part of the facility’s design — as long as the building is being built in West Brunswick.
Brunswick West members at the time said that NNEPRA was ignoring
Brunswick West’s overarching concern of the building location, and instead focused on minutiae such what color to paint the facility.
Morrison struck a more conciliatory tone on Friday.
The NNEPRA Layover Advisory Committee had been formed in order to gather input regarding the design of the 60,000 square-foot facility, to be built in order to house Downeaster trains indoors near the line’s northern terminus of Brunswick Station.
Morrison said Brunswick West participated with the committee because it was an “opportunity to express how we felt on … issues as they arose.”
“It’s just something we welcomed as part of the process,” Morrison said,
Efforts to reach Quinn Friday were unsuccessful.
Morrison said he attended a meeting of NNEPRA’s board July 28, in which NNEPRA renamed the advisory committee the “Brunswick Layover Advisory Group.”
According to an article in The Forecaster, the group’s mission has changed to “facilitate information exchanges between NNEPRA and the Brunswick community.”
Morrison said he attended that meeting.
“I expressed the fact that in no way were we trying to create bad feelings or upset people,” said Morrison, “but it’s important to get both sides of the issue.”
Going forward, Morrison said Brunswick West would continue to “address among ourselves issues that we put forward at the last advisory meeting.”
Specifically, Morrison said Brunswick West would closely follow NNEPRA as it applies for permits required by the Federal Railroad Administration.
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