Time is running out to raise money to save the historic Moline train depot and preservationists now say they will ask the city on Tuesday night to extend the December 18th deadline.
"We're going to ask the city council to please give us an extension'', said Diann Moore, the head of the Save the Depot campaign.
"The grassroots support has been overwhelming'', said fellow preservationist Barb Sandberg. "The pledges of $25 to $100. That's where 80 percent of our money has come from'', she said.
"It's our fiscal cliff, but we are not ready to fall over it. We are holding tight and we are going to make it", Sandberg said.
The city council set the December 18th deadline, but Moore says the state has indicated the depot doesn't have to be out of the way until 2014. She says she's hoping the majority of the council will vote for the extended deadline.
Moore says in just ten weeks time, more than $76,000 in cash and in-kind pledges have been made to move the depot from its current location to make way for a new I-74 bridge.
She says they are on the right track, and have had railroad enthusiasts from around the country express interest in helping, but not until after the first of the year. Moore and Sandberg will make their pitch at Tuesday night's Committee of the Whole meeting.
"We're going to give them a whole list of all the things we have done and how hard we have worked in a very short time frame and explain the additional contacts we've come up with'', she said.