WESTBROOK - Shore Line East riders will have to wait just a little longer for the newly renovated and expanded Westbrook Shore Line East train station to open. A full opening of the new station, originally planned for May 2013, will now be delayed until December 2013.

Project engineer Paul Andruskiewicz of the State Department of Transportation (DOT) said that unexpected site conditions left Banton Construction with months of additional work to ready the site for new station platform foundations.

What the contractor found-and what had to be removed-was a large concrete mass buried underground on the south side of the tracks. According to Andruskiewicz, the concrete appears to have been left over at the end of concrete pouring jobs.

It was an unexpected location for buried utilities that led to another problem, this time on the north side of the tracks. The utilities' location overlapped and was in conflict with the location on the site selected for the new overhead train bridge's foundations. This problem also took several months to resolve.

When the new, modern Shore Line East station opens in December, many new parking spaces will become available for the train's riders. On the south side of the tracks at the end of Norris Avenue is a lot with 178 spaces, including six dedicated for handicapped riders. Another 20 spaces will be built on the north side of the train tracks.

The new train station facility incorporates land formerly owned by the Town of Westbrook and where the town's Public Works Department had the town garage. This former town land was traded with the DOT-the town got a nearly five-acre state road maintenance site on Route 145 for a new town garage, and the DOT got the old public works site to incorporate into the new and expanded Shore Line East train station.

Banton Construction's project to demolish the old town garage and salt shed buildings and construct a new train station on the site began in November 2011. The value of the contract award to Banton was $9,553,000.