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(rshsdepot) Suburban Station, Philadelphia, PA

From the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Bernie Wagenblast
Transportation Communications Newsletter
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/transport-communications/

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Station Project Finally Sees Light at the End of the Tunnel
The Philadelphia Inquirer

May 22--SEPTA's Suburban Station is a daily rite of passage for 100,000 
commuters -- one to get through as quickly as possible.
Dark and dirty, freezing in winter and tropical in summer, the Center City 
hub of SEPTA's rail system is a shadow of the showpiece opened in 1929 by 
the powerful Pennsylvania Railroad.

These days, conditions seem even worse as commuters thread their way among 
plywood construction barriers amid a din of hammering and power tools, part 
of the $63 million makeover that began in 1997.

Commuters may be skeptical, but the end is near. By summer of 2006, SEPTA 
says, the station and concourse will have had their first major renovation 
in 76 years. Retail space will double to 30 stores, leased to high-quality 
tenants. The terminal's west end will be ready to open in 2007 into the 
grand atrium of the 57-story Comcast tower at 17th Street and John F. 
Kennedy Boulevard.

"At the end of the day, I think people are going to be impressed," said 
Gerald M. Maier, SEPTA's director of real estate. "The problem some days is 
remembering that there will be an end of the day."

Maier's frustration is understandable. SEPTA owns Suburban Station and the 
concourse that was extended in the 1950s to connect the station with the 
stand of Penn Center office towers above and to the Market-Frankford 
subway's 15th Street station. But renovating the long-neglected facility has 
meant coming to terms with Penn Center's various owners, who also control 
parts of the concourse, shops, and common walls; the city, which controls 
the north-south numbered streets above and below ground; and a thicket of 
76-year-old easements and deed restrictions.

And all work must be done while the 100,000 commuters and pedestrians use 
the facility every weekday, and without disrupting rail service.

"There have been a lot of surprises," said Terry Heiser, SEPTA's project 
manager on the Suburban Station job. "One surprise after another."

Take the concourse floor, which runs from 18th to 15th Street. After 
removing walls, Heiser said, workers discovered an 11-inch deviation in the 
elevation from one end to the other.

When other walls were removed, Heiser said, workers discovered the original 
marble-clad station wall. There turned out to be no space between the 
plaster ceilings and the floors above, Heiser said, which meant tearing out 
the original ceilings to install new ventilation ducts and replastering the 
ceiling to meet historic restoration rules.

"You don't have any wiggle room here," Heiser added. "You've got to work in 
the space you have."

There were also surprises left behind by some former tenants, such as 
furniture and trash, a locker of old meat in an abandoned grocery and an 
eight-inch-deep trench excavated in the concrete floor.

With some former tenants, Heiser said, "the attitude was 'Forget about it, 
Joe will take care of it,' and we're Joe."

That attitude had a long pedigree at Suburban Station, which became a 
bricks-and-mortar chronicle of the decline and fall of the Pennsylvania and 
Penn Central Railroads.

"As money ran out, they let one thing go after another," said Maier.

Maier's personal favorite horror story is the concourse restrooms. The 
railroad maintained them until the 1950s, when Penn Center was developed and 
a Sheraton Hotel built above. But after the hotel was built, Maier said, the 
Pennsy never made sure someone else continued cleaning the restrooms.

Maier said that by the time SEPTA inherited the property after the 1970 Penn 
Central bankruptcy, "the conditions in the restrooms were unbelievable. It 
was like a casting call for deviants."

Though it may not seem that way to the public, Heiser said work is 80 
percent complete. It began in 1997 with installation of water chillers 
needed to air-condition the station and concourse for the first time (since 
1929, fresh air has been sucked in from fourth-story vents in the Suburban 
Station building and pumped to the concourse, train platforms and the two 
levels of service tunnels below tracks).

That was followed in 1998 by removal of asbestos and pollutants, 
installation of new ventilation ducts in 2001, and the beginning of work in 
passenger areas in 2002.

Throughout, Heiser said, SEPTA is restoring the original 1929 color scheme 
and cleaning and reusing marble wall panels, art deco bronze ceiling light 
fixtures, and the decorative bronze access doors to utility lines.

But the need to keep the station open for rail passengers and to accommodate 
construction planning for the Comcast tower "has meant we've had to do a lot 
of the work in a checkerboard fashion."

For passengers, said architect Roderick Wolfson, the principal at Bower 
Lewis Thrower Architects who is managing the design, the current work is 
most important: disassembling the original ticket windows, rotating them 180 
degrees and stripping away retail space tacked on over time to create a real 
waiting area.

By reusing original bronze and marble fittings, Wolfson said, the station 
"will have a waiting area that looks very traditional but which was never 
there."

Other improvements are apparent, such as the striking, new glass 
"headhouses" -- entryways -- going from sidewalk at 15th and 16th Streets; 
new stores and a new concourse way to 18th Street.

SEPTA has contracted management of retail space to MetroMarket, a joint 
venture of U.S. Equities and the Rubin Organization involved in renovating 
30th Street Station.

Ultimately, MetroMarket's general manager Tony DeAngelo said, Suburban 
Station's retail stores could generate significant income for SEPTA. Even 
during construction, DeAngelo added, MetroMarket has collected $3.82 million 
in rents in the last eight years, and its tenants have made $3.9 million in 
improvements to SEPTA property.

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1148
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org