The Falmouth bus station is open to the public again, following a month-long hiatus after the departure of The Station Grill café in late December.

“We’ve tripled the access to the station,” said Wayne H. Lingafelter, executive director of Falmouth’s Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, which manages the station under a 100-year lease from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

The station’s access was previously tied to the operating hours of The Station Grill. Mr. Lingafelter said that because the café’s equipment and food were accessible to anyone entering the station, the building was only opened when café staff were on-site. This limited bus patrons’ and bike path users’ access, especially during the winter months when the café operated on reduced hours, he said.

By Elizabeth Saito Falmouth Enterprise

The state has given its preliminary blessing for a workforce housing development adjacent to the bus station on Depot Avenue. This conceptual go-ahead allows Falmouth’s economic development council to begin substantive discussions about what should be built on the two-acre wooded site.

Falmouth’s Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, a quasi-public agency, has a 99-year lease on the bus station property and has been thinking about building affordable housing there for the past several years. A major hurdle in moving forward was the uncertainty as to whether the state, which owns the property, would agree.

By Elizabeth Saito Falmouth Enterprise

Workmen began repairs to the exterior of the Falmouth Station on Depot Avenue on Wednesday, November 8. The work is expected to wrap up by December, and the station will remain open throughout.

The joints between the bus station’s bricks are deteriorating, allowing moisture to seep into the bricks. The water then freezes and cracks the brickwork, a process known as spalling. Water is also seeping inside around the windows and causing the drywall to rot.

“It’s the first building that many people coming to Falmouth see,” said Wayne H. Lingafelter, executive director of the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, the nonprofit responsible for the historic structure’s upkeep.

Someone has been relieving themselves frequently in recent weeks in the men’s restroom of the Falmouth Station bus depot—but not in the toilets.

“While it has not occurred nightly, it occurs regularly,” Wayne Lingafelter, executive director of the Falmouth Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, told his board on Tuesday, June 13.

The EDIC leases the station and surrounding property from the state Department of Transportation and oversees its management.

Falmouth Economic Development and Industrial Corporation plan to undertake a market needs study as a precursor to a possible affordable housing development adjacent to Falmouth Station.

At its monthly meeting Tuesday, April 11, board members expressed willingness to commission an assessment of the site, which encompasses about two acres of wooded land bordering the bus depot and the Steamship Authority ferry parking lot. Buses that turn off Palmer Avenue to arrive at the station trace an outline around the northern edge of the prospective project site.

Economic corporation Executive Director Wayne H. Lingafelter described the study as a logical first step.

Falmouth’s Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC) is hoping to make its leadership more diverse, but efforts have not proved fruitful thus far.

At present, five of the seven board members are white males, with one woman and one man of Hispanic origin. The board knows of up to three positions that will need to be filled by the end of June. EDIC executive director Wayne Lingafelter said he and outgoing EDIC chairman Christopher Land have both talked with potential female candidates, all of whom declined.

The EDIC is a nonprofit corporation with wider latitude than a typical government agency to usher along economic opportunity projects. Its portfolio includes the restoration of the Falmouth bus station, a solar array at the Falmouth landfill and the Falmouth Technology Park.