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(rshsdepot) More on Seattle's King Street Station

-From the Seattle, WA Post-Intelligencer...


King Street train station is rockin' again
Amtrak and Sounder traffic give impetus to an anticipated refurbishing of
facility

Monday, July 9, 2001

By GEORGE FOSTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A feeling of revival is replacing years of neglect at King Street Station.

The tracks are busy once again. The 7:16 a.m. Sound Transit commuter train
rolls in on Track No. 1, its bell ringing, as passengers board Amtrak's 7:30
a.m. to Portland, two tracks away. Within 15 minutes there are another
arrival and departure.

Through the commotion, crews erect metal sheds above newly reconstructed
station platforms.

Forget, for the moment, that the depot's 245-foot Venetian-style clock tower
doesn't tell time; that its interior marble (well, what's left of it) is
tarnished and cracked; and that some Amtrak customers ask for their money
back after one look at the seedy waiting room.

Change takes time.

This month, prolonged negotiations are said to be in their final stages for
the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad to donate the 95-year-old redbrick
station to a non-profit entity for restoration and conversion into a modern
rail-bus hub.

"We've been thinking any day now," said Stephen Anderson, rail operations
manager for the state Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the
project.  "But the railroads have 130 years of practice in negotiating
skills."

An agreement is necessary for the $42 million restoration project to
continue.

If one is reached, sometime this summer the station will shed nearly 100
years of railroad ownership, dating back to when James J. Hill controlled
the transcontinental Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines to Puget
Sound.

And the new owner, Railroad Station Properties (RSP), would complete the
project in mid-2003.

The station had grand beginnings.

Through negotiations with R.H. Thompson, then the city engineer, Hill agreed
to bore a 5,104-foot tunnel under what is now the downtown business area and
remove rail traffic from the then-congested waterfront. The south portal of
the tunnel at South Jackson Street seemed a logical site for Hill to build a
large passenger station serving both large railroads.
Hill hired one of the most prominent architectural firms specializing in
train stations, Reed and Stem of St. Paul Minn., which had worked on Grand
Central Terminal in New York. A clock tower would closely resemble the
campanile at the Piazza de San Marco in Venice.

The station opened May 10, 1906. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported:

"Crowds thronged the depot all day long ... and the workmen finishing the
interior of the magnificent passenger structure had difficulty to continue
work at times during the day."

This was the golden age of rail travel. And architects both in Europe and
the United States borrowed from the Baroque, Gothic and neo-classical styles
to give importance to this new type of structure -- designed to handle the
arrival and departure of large crowds.

This is evident in the ornate neo-classical ceiling of King Street Station's
waiting room. But in the 1960s, it was covered up by a beige false ceiling
to give the room a more modern look. For the same reason, elegant marble
wainscoting was removed.
Many of these omissions are expected to be restored, subject to historic
preservation requirements.

"Federal requirements are that if it's gone, you don't fake it back in,"
said John Schwartz, a development management consultant on the project. His
firm, Barrientos LLC, also worked on restoring Union Station, a block to the
east.
It has been 28 years since the King Street depot was placed on the National
Historic Register. That followed nearly 30 years of steady decline in
passenger rail travel -- a trend that only recently turned around locally
with more Amtrak riders and the reintroduction of commuter rail.

The depot is due to reopen in mid-2003 in much the same condition it was
presented to the people of Seattle in May 1906.

The means by which this will be accomplished is more complicated:

Railroad Station Properties, a subsidiary of the non-profit National
Development Council, was selected by the state to take temporary ownership
and responsibilities for restoration along with Nitze-Stagen & Co. RSP also
will raise the balance of about $22 million needed for the work.

Through an Internal Revenue Service ruling, the private non-profit
organization can issue government-rated, tax-exempt bonds to cover much of
the restoration project, provided at least 90 percent of the building is in
public use until the bonds are paid off.

Funds also are coming from the Federal Transit Administration, the state's
Transportation Improvement Board and local sources.

On the private side, the South Downtown Foundation has donated $250,000
toward public art and other improvements to a plaza on the Jackson Street
side of the station.

The state Department of Transportation will lease the station over a 30-year
period, subleasing office space to other public agencies. This rent will go
toward paying off the bonds.

The railroad has placed a value of more than $9 million on the old station
to be donated.

The agreement includes the sale of some adjoining land valued at $500,000.

Amtrak will continue to occupy part of the building and run its inter-city
trains, paying only for its own operations and maintenance.

Beginning early next year, a temporary modular structure just south of the
station will by used as a waiting room for Amtrak passengers, according to
Schwartz.

After the station work is completed, the same space adjoining the tracks is
expected to be used as a bus stop for Metro Transit and other coaches
connecting with Amtrak and commuter trains.

Other buses will stop above the tracks along Fourth Avenue South, linked by
elevators and stairs via the South Weller Street pedestrian overpass.

Already, the brick station has become a hub once again, surrounded by recent
and present redevelopment -- sports stadiums, new office buildings and a
renovated and restored Union Station complex across Fourth Avenue South.

"We really believe that King Street Station is sort of at the center of the
wheel in all this redevelopment," Anderson said.
That's what they were saying nearly 100 years ago.

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