Thursday, April 2, 1998 | 3:24 a.m.
Nevada Department of Transportation Director Tom Stephens has agreed to speed up the Sherman Station project so the chamber can move into the main building a little sooner, according to Assemblyman John Carpenter, R-Elko.
"I think it will be on a fast track," Carpenter said. NDOT contacted him last month to say the department is negotiating a contract with the architectural firm of Dolven-Chaulmers Associates of Reno.
"We've just got to keep right on top of it. The money is there," Carpenter said. He added that he has found NDOT officials easy to work with and believes Sherman Station will be a "feather in their cap."
NDOT is administering federal funds to finish the first floor of the main log building for a tourist center, gift shop, historical displays, chamber events and North East Nevada Development Authority offices.
The chamber is eager to move because the present office on Idaho Street is in the way of the new Northeastern Nevada Museum wing. And, the chamber is expecting the pioneer village concept to draw tourists.
"There's a lot of interest, and a lot of tourists are anxious to come back and see it finished," said chamber Executive Director Carla Wille.
Brent Chamberlain, who is spearheading the Sherman Station project for the chamber, said his goal is to have the outbuildings ready this tourist season using the adopt-a-building plan.
Tourists could look at the outbuildings, the old schoolhouse, stable, creamery and blacksmith shop instead of being frozen out by a fence.
Chamberlain said he saw no reason why the schoolhouse couldn't have its original furnishings in place by this tourist season, the blacksmith shop have a working forge and carriage rides be conducted out of the stable.
The plan calls for service clubs or businesses to finish the outbuildings by contributing money or volunteer labor and materials.
"The idea is to make it a community project," he said.
The chamber also hopes to get landscaping donated, Wille said.
Sherman Station is a large log ranch built by Valentine Walther in 1876 in Huntington Valley along with other log outbuildings. Peter and Kathy Scheidemann of XJ Ranch donated the buildings.
With earlier donations, grants and fund-raisers, the chamber relocated the building from Jiggs to Elko's city park, installed foundations for the buildings and paid the Carlin Conservation Camp for an inmate crew to reassemble the stable.
The chamber was trying to finish Sherman Station without federal funds so the main building would be ready this year.
NDOT is administering a $529,316 grant using federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act funds for work on Sherman Station, but federal construction procedures can be time consuming, Wille and Chamberlain said.
Before meeting with Carpenter, Stephens said the Sherman Station project would proceed in "normal government fashion," going out to bid for a contractor this fall.
"We expect to turn the building over on the second of July 1999," he said at the time.
Now, Chamberlain said it's likely the big building can be open before the 1999 tourist season because NDOT is willing to expedite the process.
"It looks like they can move it up by a few months, which is excellent," he said.
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