Bellwood Mayor Frank A. Pasquale is waiting on the railroad.

Pasquale wants a new Metra station in Bellwood to replace the current Bellwood and Melrose Park stations. It would anchor a 55-acre retail and housing development that he says would bring jobs and tax revenue to the west suburb.

"The station is the locomotive that's going to drive this," said Pasquale, a dapper former high school counselor who has been mayor of the mostly black and Hispanic town for the last seven years.

He enthusiastically shows an artist's rendering with tree-lined streets, apartments, senior condos, stores and a two-story parking garage. "This would create a downtown," Pasquale said.

But while Metra and Melrose Park are on board with the plan, Bellwood has waited for months for a response from Omaha-based Union Pacific, which controls the tracks. Bellwood's last letter to UP was in December.

"It would take a year to build, if the Union Pacific said OK," Pasquale said.

The land is already being cleared. The train station and parking would cost $37 million, which along with infrastructure improvements would be paid for by tax-increment financing. Private developers would handle the rest.

Union Pacific is reviewing the project and will have a decision "in a few weeks," said spokesman Mark Davis.