(rshsdepot) Minneapolis

["James Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

-From the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune...

Published Saturday, May 12, 2001

Talk of a central train station in Minneapolis emerging
Linda Mack / Star Tribune

New York has Grand Central Terminal. St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman wants to
revive Union Depot for Amtrak. And now Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles
Belton wants her city to have its own rail station in the Warehouse
District.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation already is planning a station
where the Hiawatha light-rail line and the proposed North Star commuter line
someday will meet at N. 5th St. and 5th Av. N., a location that's near a
potential baseball stadium site. But Sayles Belton has asked city planners
to look at other sites along 5th St. closer to the heart of downtown.

"We should bring the trains to the people," said downtown planner Jack
Byers. He said a station could be a place to buy a newspaper, coffee and
flowers as well as a portal to underground tracks.

The idea was aired Friday in Minneapolis at a city Planning Department
event. Karen Alschuler of the San Francisco planning and urban design firm
SMWM showed the design and thinking behind the glassy $1 billion Transbay
Terminal that is planned to bring together the Bay Area's many bus, train
and potential high-speed rail lines in downtown San Francisco.

Efforts to beef up rail service are being made around the country as part of
city revitalization, Alschuler said.

On Thursday, Minneapolis officials talked with Ray Lang, director of
government affairs at Amtrak, about the possibility of being part of such a
station. Amtrak's Twin Cities stop has been in the Midway area of St. Paul
since 1978 following the closure of downtown train stations in both cities
in the early 1970s.

St. Paul's Union Depot has been preserved and its concourse remains vacant.
Coleman has been meeting with Amtrak officials and U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar,
D-Minn., to push the idea of reusing the concourse for a stop on Amtrak's
Empire Builder line and for a possible high-speed line to Chicago.

Minneapolis had two downtown depots. The Great Northern Depot on Hennepin
Avenue was torn down in 1978. The Milwaukee Road Depot along Washington
Avenue is being renovated as hotel and restaurant space, and an ice-skating
rink has opened in the former train shed.

Minneapolis mayoral aide Ron Thaniel said the effort "is not a competition
with our sister city. It just doesn't make sense to take a train to St. Paul
and then take a $20 cab ride to Minneapolis."

He said that part of the mayor's thinking is that high-speed rail to Chicago
could reduce air traffic. And Byers said a visible and accessible station
would attract new transit users, reducing highway congestion.

The city's proposed station sites would better meet passengers' needs, Byers
said. A station at 2nd Av. N. would be near the light-rail station planned
for the Warehouse District and a bus stop in the city's 5th Street ramp. And
a station between Hennepin and 1st Av. N. on Block D, on which the Shubert
Theater sits, would be very visible and closer to the downtown core and
entertainment on Block E.

He said many questions lie ahead, including engineering, design and funding.

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