$70K approved turn start turning old depot into community center

JASON HAWK EDITOR

AMHERST — City Council has approved $70,000 to begin renovations of Nordson Depot, which will become community center and the new home of the Amherst Office on Aging.

“There’s a lot to be done with that building — all the air conditioning, the heating, a lot of electrical, some plumbing,” Mayor Mark Costilow said last Monday night. “There’s a lot of things that need to be done to be brought up to speed.”

The Nordson Corporation donated the 117-yearold railway station to the city in November 2021.

The Franklin Avenue building came with 5.4 acres of land and $150,000 to be used for repairs and upgrades.

Costilow said that money wasn’t tabbed for use in the city’s first-quarter budget because he didn’t expect to be able to get work started so early.

Now there’s “an oppor- tunity to get contractors in the building,” he said, and a chance to have the depot open to the public by the start of the summer.

In a phone interview, Costilow said moving the Office on Aging from its home on Cleveland Avenue would provide daytime staffing at the depot.

It also means the old building will likely be put up for sale when it is no longer needed, he said. The property is zoned for residential use, and

Costilow suggested the 1,842-square-foot building could potentially be torn down to make room for more houses.

Council unanimously approved the $70,000 spending request on its first reading with little conversation.

Councilman Jake Wachholz, D-Ward 3, did ask about rumors a playground would be installed on the Nordson Depot grounds. Costilow said Nordson Corporation has committed to installing outdoor equipment there, but it probably won’t be a chil- college.

“I thought in my mind that Oberlin was ‘more liberal.’ I don’t think I knew what the word liberal meant at the time, so that was part of my imagination,” he said.

Despite early aspirations of becoming a chemist, he studied philosophy at Oberlin. Morrisett later said he never intended to be a philosopher, but a teacher.

Late in his time as a student at Oberlin College, he became interested in the scientific study of human behavior.

He graduated in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology.

He continued his studies at UCLA, and later earned a doctorate in experimental psychology from Yale University. Morrisett met Ganz Cooney at a dinner party in the 1960s. The duo cooked up the idea of using television to prepare underprivileged children for school.

“We were always interested, remember, in reaching young children who needed this program the most, and most of those kids are in urban areas,” he said in the 2004