The chug of a train hasn't been heard in Public Square in decades, but Watertown planners are trying to revive some of the historic ambience when J.B. Wise parking lot is reconstructed next summer.

A covered 250-foot walkway resembling a train station is included in the $1.7 million project to rebuild the infrastructure and redesign the lot between Public Square and Black River Parkway.

Designs of the walkway show it being broken into three separate buildings. Councilman Peter L. Clough suggested and the City Council agreed at a Tuesday night work session that the walkway should be one long building.

"It just makes sense to me that if it's a covered walkway, it should be connected," Mr. Clough said.

A depot once sat in the parking lot and fed passengers to trains that traveled down what are now Mill and Pearl streets and Black River Parkway. The building was torn down in an urban renewal project.

"It's something Lu Engineering came up with," City Planner Christine E. Hoffman said of the train station design. "It's an important part of the city's history, so we wanted to play off it a little."

The city hired the Penfield firm to design the project. The city has included $1.2 million in the current fiscal year's capital budget and it also received a $830,000 grant from the state's Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Environmental Protection Fund.

"The city will end up paying a little more than half for the project," Mrs. Hoffman said.

Restrooms in the walkway will be accessible during events and electricity will be available.

More than 300 spots are now available in the parking lot. Once the walkway, "bioswales" and crosswalks are installed, Mrs. Hoffman said, that number will be reduced to about 270 spaces.

The city will designate at least nine spaces for parking for the handicapped and three larger spaces for buses to park.

Mrs. Hoffman said the bioswales will be depressed areas where shrubs and other vegetation will be planted. The areas will absorb and filter storm water and dump it into a sewer main being installed under the lot.

A combined storm water/sanitary sewer main will be replaced with two separate lines. The city also will replace a water main that dates back to the 1890s.

"This project is a linchpin between our downtown and the riverfront," Mrs. Hoffman said.

The city plans to solicit bids in March and begin construction in May.

"Our goal is to have at least a portion of the project open to parking at any given time," Mrs. Hoffman said. "We don't want people to have to move to another lot while construction is under way."

Construction is expected to last the entire summer of 2009.