Altoona officials are considering building a new train and bus station next to the mainline tracks, if the city is unsuccessful in obtaining a $1.7 million grant to renovate the Transportation Center, which is across the 10th Avenue expressway from the tracks.

The station would be smaller than the Transportation Center, less costly to maintain, because it wouldn’t need two elevators and an expressway crossover, and it would actually look like a station, unlike the center — which is hidden within the city’s parking garage, said City Manager Ken Decker, who spoke of the potential project at a Redevelopment Authority meeting Friday.

For now, the city has applied for multi-modal transportation funding from the state Department of Community and Economic Development for the $1.87 million Transportation Center project, and plans soon to apply for a similar grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, in hopes that one will come through.

The plan is to make needed repairs and turn much of the center space into a “white box” that could be built out to suit an institutional or business tenant, so rental income from the tenant and from Amtrak and Greyhound for their ticket offices could support regular and capital maintenance long-term.

The current space at the center is poorly designed, out-of-date, overlarge and “dark and dingy,” officials have said.

The idea for building a trackside station where an interim modular station sat in the 1970s and early 1980s is just an idea in what promises to continue to be a fluid situation — given that a resolution on the grants could take almost a year, officials said.

“We can’t just wait for a year,” Decker said. “We need a Plan B.”

Amtrak is helping the city explore the possibility of getting grants for that Plan B, Decker said.

The trackside station would clearly provide easy access to trains, but it also would provide easy access to Greyhound buses, which could enter a 10th Avenue pulloff, Decker said. The avenue is plenty wide, he said.

A trackside station could also include architectural elements that would honor Altoona’s history as a railroad town, Decker said.

It would contrast not only with the Transportation Center, but with the temporarily modular, which City Councilman Bruce Kelley has called “an embarrassment.”

A trackside facility would be easier for people from out of the area to find, Kelley said.

The ground on which the potential station would sit is currently a parking area — “Lot 24” — managed by the Altoona Parking Authority.

The lot generates $34,000 a year, according to authority Executive Director Patrick Miller.

“That would be a big chunk of revenue we would be losing,” Miller said. “We would have to think long and hard whether we would give that up without a plan in place to provide those people with alternate parking.”

Still, the city could ultimately gain control of the land through eminent domain, Miller conceded.

The lot provides parking mainly for employees of the Blair County Public Assistance office and the Altoona Post Office, he said.

The authority hasn’t had any “direct conversations” about the idea, “although we knew it was out there floating,” Miller said.

A potential negotiating tool for some sort of arrangement is the Parking Authority charter, which is due to expire after 50 years at the end of 2021, hinted Decker.

The city would need to approve the new charter, Miller said.

If City Council ultimately elects to build a trackside station, the city would find some other uses for the Transportation Center, Decker said.

It could become a public meeting room for the city, for city-related organizations and for other groups, including nonprofits, he said.

It’s a large-enough space that it could accommodate social distancing for COVID-19 better than the meeting room at City Hall or Council Chambers on Washington Avenue, he said.

It could also serve as a business incubator, he suggested.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.