A state official has cleared the way for NJ Transit to renovate Bloomfield Station, a plan that faced opposition from preservationists.
Last year, the State Historic Sites Council, which reviews alterations made to National Register-listed landmarks, denied NJ Transit’s plan to modernize the station and improve accessibility. However, NJ Transit appealed that decision.
In October, Elizabeth Dragon, assistant commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection, granted their appeal. “NJ Transit has demonstrated the clear public benefit of this undertaking,” Dragon wrote in a letter to NJ Transit.
Dragon’s letter included a list of conditions, which include hiring a historic architect to help with the redesign, having a history exhibit at the station, and returning to the State Historic Sites Council to present updated plans.
Bloomfield Station opened in 1912 and was designed by architect Frank Nies. Despite being one of the busiest stops on the Montclair-Boonton line, the station has fallen into disrepair and the waiting room on the inbound side has been shuttered since a fire in 1979.
NJ Transit, which recently bought the station from Bloomfield’s municipal government, has been on a mission to make train stations more accessible to passengers after reaching a legal settlement with the United States Attorney’s Office in 2022 for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In order to make trains easier to board, NJ Transit’s plan is to raise both the inbound and outbound platform to the height of the train doors. Passengers would no longer have to hoist themselves up into the car. This is similar to the renovation at Newark’s Broad Street Station, completed in 2009.
The plan would require removing and reconstructing the historic canopies – a detail that concerned preservationists.
“I sort of understand their mentality – they really want people to get off and on trains as quickly and safely as possible,” said Richard Rockwell, who was Bloomfield’s councilman-at-large at the time of the hearings but has since resigned. “On the one hand it will be nice that it’s going to be a modern station, but it’s unfortunate they’re not keeping all the historic character.”
Other ideas had been presented to the state council in August that would have improved boarding for passengers without raising the platforms and demolishing the historic canopies – these included using either mobile lifts or “mini-high platforms,” which are currently used South Orange Station.
But Richard Schaeffer, senior vice president at NJ Transit, believes that having the entire platform at grade level would be the most efficient method when accommodating large crowds at once. Ridership at the station is projected to serve 2,000 people per day, he said.
This is not the first time Dragon has stepped in and overruled the Historic Sites Review Council’s decision. In 2022, when Newark officials presented a plan to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus at a National Register-listed historic district and replace it with a statue of Harriet Tubman, the state council unanimously denied that plan. In both cases, the reason they gave was that stakeholders weren’t included in the process.
Dragon’s decision to intervene in the council’s decision is controversial as some believe it undermines what little power preservationists wield to protect New Jersey’s landmarks. Others believe that preservationists were simply causing unnecessary delays to a vital infrastructure project.
STORIES ABOUT BLOOMFIELD STATION
ELIZABETH DRAGON'S LETTER TO NJ TRANSIT
