Summertime Blues
Senator Tom Coburn, M.D.
Senator John McCain
100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues
A u g u s t 2 0 1 0
______________________________________________
5. Abandoned Train Station Converted Into Museum
(Glassboro, NJ) - $1.2 million
Taxpayers may not be happy to learn that they are paying for one broken down train station twice. The
Glassboro train station was built in 1860 and closed in 1971.
Unused for nearly 40 years, it now sits boarded up and riddled with graffiti. In 2002, the Borough of Glassboro, New Jersey received nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the U.S. Department of Transportation to purchase the train station
from Conrail. 46 At that time, officials hoped to incorporate the station into the regional NJ Transit system. But those plans fell through, and since then local officials have been looking for a way to fund renovations to put the building to some use.
After eight years of failure and further deterioration of the building, the effort has been saved only by the
availability of federal stimulus dollars.48 Local officials lobbied hard for additional stimulus money. They are hoping to spend the more than $1 million for the project “interpreting local history in its proper setting and make it a museum, public meeting space and welcome center.”
