Readers Unsure About the Future of Retailing at St. Louis Union Station
Last week readers weren’t optimistic about the future of retailing at Union Station:
Q: Does retailing at Union Station have a future?
- The surrounding blocks need infill with housing with local shoppers 37 [30.58%]
- A few places will do well, but the rest of the retail space needs to be reallocated to other uses 26 [21.49%]
- No! 20 [16.53%]
- Sure, just needs better marketing 11 [9.09%]
- Retailing under the shed needs to be opened to 18th Street 6 [4.96%]
- unsure/no opinion 6 [4.96%]
- Other: 15 [12.4%]
I was glad to see my favorite answer get the most votes.  The surroundings  are depressing, Union Station representatives say they aren’t a mall — they are a destination. Yes, when someone is in town that hasn’t seen the Grand Hall I take them to see it. That happens once every five years. In between I might go to an event or meet someone but otherwise I have no reason to visit.
The numerous dead spaces around Union Station must be filled in with offices and residential. Eliminate the on/off ramps at 22nd Street (add WB exits at Jefferson) and build a new neighborhood.
For a number of years now mall owners have been opening up walls and starting to face some retail spaces outward. Union Station must reevaluate the lack of connectedness to both 18th & 20th streets.
The other answers provided by readers were numerous:
- It is isolated from the east, west, north and south. Wide roads are moats.
- Tourists want a place 2 shop DT, but dont like US stores- need better retailers
- needs free parking – then marketing
- It could be an enclosed antique mall.
- it would if trains stop there again!
- Put in open market where paid parking exists!
- reduce and concentrate retail to ground level, coordinated int. facelift & mktg
- Reality is that if it has stores and life it will be snuffed out by thugs.
- needs free parking and better marketing
- Amtrack should of been positioned there, problem solved.
- It’s isolated, needs free parking and needs specialty shopping such as outlets
- Turn it into an IKEA.
- Both items 1 & 2
- Union Stations around the country have failed also – it is not just St Louis.
- Needs something new!
Note the software presents poll answers in random order to each person so I have no idea what answers the person at #13 liked. For #12 the site is way too small for an Ikea even if you razed all the structures. Ikea stores are far from the urban core for a reason — they are auto-centric big boxes.
Hopefully buyers will come along and update the train shed and the city will work to fill in the surroundings.
– Steve Patterson
Actually, IKEA in Tampa is pretty close to downtown and on a relatively small (for IKEA) site: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ikea+tampa&hl=en&ll=27.952483,-82.446814&spn=0.027977,0.054846&fb=1&gl=us&hq=ikea&hnear=0x88c2b782b3b9d1e1:0xa75f1389af96b463,Tampa,+FL&cid=0,0,11058033029040878891&t=h&z=14&vpsrc=6&iwloc=A IF the train shed here could be modified to work and IF we could accept it being painted IKEA blue, I wouldn’t dismiss the idea completely. Still, using the Streets Department site (on the northeast corner of Hampton & I-44) would make more sense for an in-town location than trying to make Union Station work.
The challenge for Union Station here isn’t the Great Hall, it’s the historic train shed. If that were removed, it would greatly simplify the reuse options, including potentially restoring / installing a finer-grained street grid. But it’s also historic and unique, so saving it makes sense, too. The other challenge is simply one of supply and demand – we’re not lacking for developable land, and, as you noted, once you’ve seen the Great Hall, there’s not much else here to attract people, either visitors or residents. And a related issue is that many of its immediate neighbors are, by design, government and civic uses that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon – post office, Peabody / Scottrade, Gateway Mall – that don’t have, and probably will never have, much ongoing street-level activity.
One quick fix could be a return to a fare-free zone downtown on Metrolink. Union Station is a good hike from the rest of downtown, yet it’s well-served by Metrolink. Much like the free parking discussion, free transit could encourage more people to make the trip over to check things out. The thug / crime question / perception is more problematic and not unique to this location. The Galleria and the Loop are two other destinations trying to balance conflicting perceptions and demographics.
Actually, IKEA in Tampa is pretty close to downtown and on a relatively small (for IKEA) site: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ikea+tampa&hl=en&ll=27.952483,-82.446814&spn=0.027977,0.054846&fb=1&gl=us&hq=ikea&hnear=0x88c2b782b3b9d1e1:0xa75f1389af96b463,Tampa,+FL&cid=0,0,11058033029040878891&t=h&z=14&vpsrc=6&iwloc=A IF the train shed here could be modified to work and IF we could accept it being painted IKEA blue, I wouldn’t dismiss the idea completely. Still, using the Streets Department site (on the northeast corner of Hampton & I-44) would make more sense for an in-town location than trying to make Union Station work.
The challenge for Union Station here isn’t the Great Hall, it’s the historic train shed. If that were removed, it would greatly simplify the reuse options, including potentially restoring / installing a finer-grained street grid. But it’s also historic and unique, so saving it makes sense, too. The other challenge is simply one of supply and demand – we’re not lacking for developable land, and, as you noted, once you’ve seen the Great Hall, there’s not much else here to attract people, either visitors or residents. And a related issue is that many of its immediate neighbors are, by design, government and civic uses that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon – post office, Peabody / Scottrade, Gateway Mall – that don’t have, and probably will never have, much ongoing street-level activity.
One quick fix could be a return to a fare-free zone downtown on Metrolink. Union Station is a good hike from the rest of downtown, yet it’s well-served by Metrolink. Much like the free parking discussion, free transit could encourage more people to make the trip over to check things out. The thug / crime question / perception is more problematic and not unique to this location. The Galleria and the Loop are two other destinations trying to balance conflicting perceptions and demographics.
The fare-free zone is an interesting idea. As far as Ikea in Tampa — it is their exception. Yes, 2 miles isn’t far but you’d take a highway to get there. I-44 & Hampton would be a tight fit and Hampton couldn’t handle the traffic. I-44 in Fenton at the old Chrysler Plant location would be considerably better.
Agree on the traffic challenges at I-44 & Hampton – my goal is if / when IKEA comes to the region that they locate in the city, somewhere, and not out someplace like the old Chrysler plant site. Besides the boost to the local ego, it would bring in several million dollars of new sales taxes into the city without playing the moving a Walmart or a local supermarket from one local city to another game. Heck, they could move into the Jones Dome when the Rams leave town 😉
I would like to have an Ikea in the region, but my budget wouldn’t. Hampton & I-44 would require razing the old MSD building and relocating the Streets Dept. The city would likely give away the land to lure them and possibly give tax abatement. It would provide jobs but it would also be competition for existing businesses.
The fare-free zone is an interesting idea. As far as Ikea in Tampa — it is their exception. Yes, 2 miles isn’t far but you’d take a highway to get there. I-44 & Hampton would be a tight fit and Hampton couldn’t handle the traffic. I-44 in Fenton at the old Chrysler Plant location would be considerably better.
It annoys me that so many people think Ikea will be the savior to all our problems. It’s like a small town thinking they have arrived if they have a Wal-Mart.
It annoys me that so many people think Ikea will be the savior to all our problems. It’s like a small town thinking they have arrived if they have a Wal-Mart.
And that an Ikea is appropriate anywhere.
Never said that IKEA would be our savior. It’s just one of those aspirational retailers that if you don’t have one, you want one. Others include Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Nordstrom (all of which we have), along with In-and-Out Burgers (which we don’t). The bigger-picture discussion is what should replace the current festival marketplace at Union Station, if / when it becomes unsustainable? There are only two ways to “save” historic structures. You can either find a viable private use or you can make it a public investment, with taxpayers paying to maintain the facility. Speculating on potential private users is probably a more viable solution than trying to justify having the city take it over and finding a use for it – we could make the Great Hall into a homeless shelter and convert the train shed into a maintenance and storage facility for the Streets Department . . . .
You didn’t but a person voting suggested an Ikea for Union Station.
>>we could make the Great Hall into a homeless shelter and convert the
train shed into a maintenance and storage facility for the Streets
Department<<
Done any good trolling lately..?
You obviously don’t get sarcasm – the train shed covers 6-8 city blocks. If the retail fails (as it appears to be headed to doing), that leaves the hotel and the parking lot as the only “going businesses” under the shed. If we want to preserve the shed, we need to either have a use for it, ideally by the private sector, or it will remain vacant and a financial burden for the city’s taxpayers. I’ve previously voiced my support for converting it into a really-cool convention center; others have suggested an indoor water park or an IKEA store. I really don’t care what the final answer is, as long as there is one. Unfortunately, the only one that appears to be currently under consideration is trying to “fix” the mall (and I don’t see that working).
City government doesn’t need more buildings – it already has a vacant courts building, a soon-to-be-vacant police HQ, as well as multiple vacant school buildings. As long as the hotel remains open, the complex can probably maintain its integrity / justify its ongoing maintenance, but if the hotel ever closes, it’s going to be hard to maintain the complex without some significant new uses, so it’s likely that St. Louis taxpayers will eventually be its proud owners. And once we own it, never underestimate the creative / stupid things that bureaucrats can put “free space” to work “solving” or “doing”. There’s a grand old theater in Detroit that’s been converted to indoor parking – I don’t want to see the same outcome here!
Correction: the train shed is equal to four blocks, half of which is occupied by the hotel.
“City blocks” is a nebulous term. We agree that the site is two blocks wide, east-to-west. My assumption of 3 to 4 blocks, north-to-south, was based on the size of the blocks immediately to the north. I guess the ultimate answer lies in the original plats, prior to the construction of Union Station.
On a side note, I’ve always found it interesting that the rooms component of the hotel here is actually more of a motel style of architecture. Obviously, this was done to preserve the train shed, but it doesn’t fit my perception or preconception of an upscale hotel in the urban core. But, then again, the public areas, in the historic part, certainly do.
I worked at the hotel from 2005-2008 when it was a Hyatt. Although the Garden Wing (the area under the trainshed) is somewhat removed from what we consider an upscale hotel, the rooms in the Head House (the old terminal hotel area in the main building) definitely fit the bill.
To call the Garden sector of the hotel a ‘motel’ however is a bit unfair. ‘Motel’ usually designates a low set structure with outside doors, allowing travelers to ‘park at their door’. The rooms inside were dated even when I worked there, but were definitely above the standard of a ‘Motel’.
With regards to Union Station as a whole though, I never purchased anything from the Mall except for Starbucks, and the majority of other staff members were in the same boat as myself. I remember the Hyatt Management frequently debated with the managers of Union Station regarding the future of the mall- Hyatt was rather ashamed of the ‘dead mall’ attached to their property which was one of the *many* reasons they pulled out and moved up the street to the former Adam’s Mark. I remember the waterpark notion floating around for quite some time, but I always thought it was quite laughable.
Part of the current problem overall though is not only the selection of shops in Union Station (which are lousy), but the fact that downtown still doesn’t attract enough St. Louis locals on a frequent basis. I honestly don’t know what the solution to the problem is.
I did not exactly perceive your comment as “sarcasm”. That is, frankly, due to other comments you have made here that seem to hold market forces as sacrosanct and inevitable, though you back off from personally advocating their often unpleasant and fallible results.
Under some conditions, irony/sarcasm/facetiousness are not at all clear, especially when utilized by a writer who has in apparent sincerity expressed other opinions about historic preservation that are no more or less outlandish than repurposing Union Station as a homeless shelter.
I believe in market forces because they seem to be the best alternative for, and the clearest indicator of, long-term success or failure. I’m not against historic preservation, but I also believe, strongly, that not everything should be saved just because it’s more than XX years old. Much of what was constructed in St. Louis prior to 1950 assumed conditions that no longer exist today – a robust streetcar system, no interstate highways, little air conditioning, no televisions or computers, and most importantly, far fewer privately-owned vehicles. We can debate the impacts, the politics, the design choices, the wisdom, etc. of all these changes, but they are the reality of our world today. And where we probably disagree the most is who does the best job of avoiding “unpleasant and fallible results”.
I would argue that government is just as culpable / fallible as the private sector; the big difference is we get to live with government failures and mistakes for much, much longer. If a strip mall fails, it usually gets replaced, unless, of course, there’s a TIF involved. On the flip side, once a highway is constructed or a streetcar line is removed, we get to live with those impacts for decades. Part of the challenge facing Union Station today is a direct result of the City Beautiful movement of a century ago. The decision to make Market Street into a grand boulevard lined with civic structures has sucked out much of the pedestrian street life that would help sustain Union Station. And since these are all significant, historic structures (including the Gateway mall), we’re going to stuck with these choices for the foreseeable future. In contrast, places like the CWE, the Grove, Cherokee Street, the Loop and Washington Avenue all continue to reinvent themselves, with ongoing, voluntary investments from the private sector.
DoubleJ, it’s all about the new sales tax revenues. IKEA just opened a store in suburban Denver. From the Denver Post: “The sales-tax future looks good . . . It’s more than a Walmart and less than a Park Meadows [major shopping mall] and for anybody in the retail world, that means more than a million (dollars) and less than nine (million dollars), but it’s somewhere in between.” http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_18925422#ixzz1buQFEfdU It’s no different than the city now being able to avoid furloughs because of increased sales tax collections as a direct result of the Cardinals palying in the World Series.
I agree. I had an IKEA near me when I grew up in Australia and honestly, it’s not all that! I don’t miss it in the slightest. An IKEA isn’t the solution to people’s woes. If they want mid century modern – esque furniture and fittings, you can find them for a fraction of the price second hand on craigslist. Buying pre-loved furniture is also the environmentally friendly thing to do 🙂
And that an Ikea is appropriate anywhere.
Never said that IKEA would be our savior. It’s just one of those aspirational retailers that if you don’t have one, you want one. Others include Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Nordstrom (all of which we have), along with In-and-Out Burgers (which we don’t). The bigger-picture discussion is what should replace the current festival marketplace at Union Station, if / when it becomes unsustainable? There are only two ways to “save” historic structures. You can either find a viable private use or you can make it a public investment, with taxpayers paying to maintain the facility. Speculating on potential private users is probably a more viable solution than trying to justify having the city take it over and finding a use for it – we could make the Great Hall into a homeless shelter and convert the train shed into a maintenance and storage facility for the Streets Department . . . .
You didn’t but a person voting suggested an Ikea for Union Station.
DoubleJ, it’s all about the new sales tax revenues. IKEA just opened a store in suburban Denver. From the Denver Post: “The sales-tax future looks good . . . It’s more than a Walmart and less than a Park Meadows [major shopping mall] and for anybody in the retail world, that means more than a million (dollars) and less than nine (million dollars), but it’s somewhere in between.”  http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_18925422#ixzz1buQFEfdU It’s no different than the city now being able to avoid furloughs because of increased sales tax collections as a direct result of the Cardinals palying in the World Series.
Agree on the traffic challenges at I-44 & Hampton – my goal is if / when IKEA comes to the region that they locate in the city, somewhere, and not out someplace like the old Chrysler plant site. Besides the boost to the local ego, it would bring in several million dollars of new sales taxes into the city without playing the moving a Walmart or a local supermarket from one local city to another game. Heck, they could move into the Jones Dome when the Rams leave town 😉
I would like to have an Ikea in the region, but my budget wouldn’t. Hampton & I-44 would require razing the old MSD building and relocating the Streets Dept. The city would likely give away the land to lure them and possibly give tax abatement. It would provide jobs but it would also be competition for existing businesses.
>>we could make the Great Hall into a homeless shelter and convert the
train shed into a maintenance and storage facility for the Streets
Department<<
Done any good trolling lately..?
Wow, Ikea is “aspirational”? Living in the Netherlands it was “where to go to get cheap furniture”, emphasis on “cheap”. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like their products. 🙂
Wow, Ikea is “aspirational”? Living in the Netherlands it was “where to go to get cheap furniture”, emphasis on “cheap”. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like their products. 🙂
Clean modern furniture is rare here and Ikea is the most affordable option by a wide margin.
You obviously don’t get sarcasm – the train shed covers 6-8 city blocks. If the retail fails (as it appears to be headed to doing), that leaves the hotel and the parking lot as the only “going businesses” under the shed. If we want to preserve the shed, we need to either have a use for it, ideally by the private sector, or it will remain vacant and a financial burden for the city’s taxpayers. I’ve previously voiced my support for converting it into a really-cool convention center; others have suggested an indoor water park or an IKEA store. I really don’t care what the final answer is, as long as there is one. Unfortunately, the only one that appears to be currently under consideration is trying to “fix” the mall (and I don’t see that working).
City government doesn’t need more buildings – it already has a vacant courts building, a soon-to-be-vacant police HQ, as well as multiple vacant school buildings. As long as the hotel remains open, the complex can probably maintain its integrity / justify its ongoing maintenance, but if the hotel ever closes, it’s going to be hard to maintain the complex without some significant new uses, so it’s likely that St. Louis taxpayers will eventually be its proud owners. And once we own it, never underestimate the creative / stupid things that bureaucrats can put “free space” to work “solving” or “doing”. There’s a grand old theater in Detroit that’s been converted to indoor parking – I don’t want to see the same outcome here!
Correction: the train shed is equal to four blocks, half of which is occupied by the hotel.
Clean modern furniture is rare here and Ikea is the most affordable option by a wide margin.
Why they don’t put trains into Union Station is a puzzle. It’s a TRAIN STATION … a wonderful unique one at that. That “Mickey Mouse’ Amtrac building is a joke. BTW, what ever happened to that wonderful train museum in the county? It was in “nowhere” and would be perfect for a station and city that was a key connecting point for all trains going to the Southwest and the West coast.Â
Why they don’t put trains into Union Station is a puzzle. It’s a TRAIN STATION … a wonderful unique one at that. That “Mickey Mouse’ Amtrac building is a joke. BTW, what ever happened to that wonderful train museum in the county? It was in “nowhere” and would be perfect for a station and city that was a key connecting point for all trains going to the Southwest and the West coast.
Short answer – times change. One, when it was built, dozens of trains a day served the city, now, less than a dozen do, all day. Two, Amtrak strongly prefers “drive-thru” stations, not ones that you need to back into, like Union Station Three, ADA requires accessibility; it’s easier to provide access to all customers on multiple tracks if it’s new construction. And four, multi-modal stations provide better connectivity between various modes of travel. Despite its controversial design, our new station provides direct access to Amtrak, intercity buses, local buses and Metrolink.
In theory, our Union Station could have been (and potentially can still be) reconfigured as a multi-modal facility. The three biggest hurdles are a) the fact that it’s been converted to what it is today, a festival market place – much of that would need to be removed, b) at least one pair of pull-thru tracks would need to be added, which could easily impact properties to the east and west, and c) its location is not as central, for local bus service. Combine those challenges with the commitment and the investments already made at the new location and you’re probably looking at 50 years, minimum.
Denver is doing more of what you envision. Part of it is that their station never stopped serving Amtrak, part of it is that it was never repurposed, and part of it is their transit agency bought it from the railroads. Still, they’re struggling with integrating the various components, http://www.denverunionstation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=48 but they have started construction. Yet the old waiting room remains problematic, much like it does here – in today’s world, we simply don’t wait around for hours, for train connections, we want to keep moving.
Don’t blame the ADA — the same type of wheelchair lift is used in Kansas City, Hermann & St. Louis.
To get to the platform or to get on the train? The only ways to safely get to a platform in a pull-through configuration is with an overhead connection (as was done here) or with tunnels.
I did not exactly perceive your comment as “sarcasm”. That is, frankly, due to other comments you have made here that seem to hold market forces as sacrosanct and inevitable, though you back off from personally advocating their often unpleasant and fallible results.
Under some conditions, irony/sarcasm/facetiousness are not at all clear, especially when utilized by a writer who has in apparent sincerity expressed other opinions about historic preservation that are no more or less outlandish than repurposing Union Station as a homeless shelter. Â
Short answer – times change. One, when it was built, dozens of trains a day served the city, now, less than a dozen do, all day. Two, Amtrak strongly prefers “drive-thru” stations, not ones that you need to back into, like Union Station Three, ADA requires accessibility; it’s easier to provide access to all customers on multiple tracks if it’s new construction. And four, multi-modal stations provide better connectivity between various modes of travel. Despite its controversial design, our new station provides direct access to Amtrak, intercity buses, local buses and Metrolink.
Â
In theory, our Union Station could have been (and potentially can still be) reconfigured as a multi-modal facility. The three biggest hurdles are a) the fact that it’s been converted to what it is today, a festival market place – much of that would need to be removed, b) at least one pair of pull-thru tracks would need to be added, which could easily impact properties to the east and west, and c) its location is not as central, for local bus service. Combine those challenges with the commitment and the investments already made at the new location and you’re probably looking at 50 years, minimum.
Â
Denver is doing more of what you envision. Part of it is that their station never stopped serving Amtrak, part of it is that it was never repurposed, and part of it is their transit agency bought it from the railroads. Still, they’re struggling with integrating the various components, http://www.denverunionstation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=48  but they have started construction. Yet the old waiting room remains problematic, much like it does here – in today’s world, we simply don’t wait around for hours, for train connections, we want to keep moving.
Don’t blame the ADA — the same type of wheelchair lift is used in Kansas City, Hermann & St. Louis.
I believe in market forces because they seem to be the best alternative for, and the clearest indicator of, long-term success or failure. I’m not against historic preservation, but I also believe, strongly, that not everything should be saved just because it’s more than XX years old. Much of what was constructed in St. Louis prior to 1950 assumed conditions that no longer exist today – a robust streetcar system, no interstate highways, little air conditioning, no televisions or computers, and most importantly, far fewer privately-owned vehicles. We can debate the impacts, the politics, the design choices, the wisdom, etc. of all these changes, but they are the reality of our world today. And where we probably disagree the most is who does the best job of avoiding “unpleasant and fallible results”.
I would argue that government is just as culpable / fallible as the private sector; the big difference is we get to live with government failures and mistakes for much, much longer. If a strip mall fails, it usually gets replaced, unless, of course, there’s a TIF involved.  On the flip side, once a highway is constructed or a streetcar line is removed, we get to live with those impacts for decades. Part of the challenge facing Union Station today is a direct result of the City Beautiful movement of a century ago. The decision to make Market Street into a grand boulevard lined with civic structures has sucked out much of the pedestrian street life that would help sustain Union Station. And since these are all significant, historic structures (including the Gateway mall), we’re going to stuck with these choices for the foreseeable future. In contrast, places like the CWE, the Grove, Cherokee Street, the Loop and Washington Avenue all continue to reinvent themselves, with ongoing, voluntary investments from the private sector.Â
“City blocks” is a nebulous term. We agree that the site is two blocks wide, east-to-west. My assumption of 3 to 4 blocks, north-to-south, was based on the size of the blocks immediately to the north. I guess the ultimate answer lies in the original plats, prior to the construction of Union Station.
On a side note, I’ve always found it interesting that the rooms component of the hotel here is actually more of a motel style of architecture. Obviously, this was done to preserve the train shed, but it doesn’t fit my perception or preconception of an upscale hotel in the urban core. But, then again, the public areas, in the historic part, certainly do.
To get to the platform or to get on the train? The only ways to safely get to a platform in a pull-through configuration is with an overhead connection (as was done here) or with tunnels.
I agree. I had an IKEA near me when I grew up in Australia and honestly, it’s not all that! I don’t miss it in the slightest. An IKEA isn’t the solution to people’s woes. If they want mid century modern – esque furniture and fittings, you can find them for a fraction of the price second hand on craigslist. Buying pre-loved furniture is also the environmentally friendly thing to do 🙂
I worked at the hotel from 2005-2008 when it was a Hyatt. Although the Garden Wing (the area under the trainshed) is somewhat removed from what we consider an upscale hotel, the rooms in the Head House (the old terminal hotel area in the main building) definitely fit the bill.
To call the Garden sector of the hotel a ‘motel’ however is a bit unfair. ‘Motel’ usually designates a low set structure with outside doors, allowing travelers to ‘park at their door’. The rooms inside were dated even when I worked there, but were definitely above the standard of a ‘Motel’.
With regards to Union Station as a whole though, I never purchased anything from the Mall except for Starbucks, and the majority of other staff members were in the same boat as myself. I remember the Hyatt Management frequently debated with the managers of Union Station regarding the future of the mall- Hyatt was rather ashamed of the ‘dead mall’ attached to their property which was one of the *many* reasons they pulled out and moved up the street to the former Adam’s Mark. I remember the waterpark notion floating around for quite some time, but I always thought it was quite laughable.
Part of the current problem overall though is not only the selection of shops in Union Station (which are lousy), but the fact that downtown still doesn’t attract enough St. Louis locals on a frequent basis. I honestly don’t know what the solution to the problem is.
Union Station as a train station is a dead idea no matter how it is spin. As JZ71 articulated, move forward.  Â
The one thing that I would change. Daylight the former freight tunnel that Metrolink uses and get the current Union Station stop under the shed!! Its a worthy Metrolink investment that won’t break the bank. The next priority. Pursue residential on the south end of station as a means to creata an overall mixed use and the real possibility of having a true TOD!!!. Lets be honest. It already has space for retail in an overbuilt market (that summarizes downtown by itself), has an established hotel with meeting space, underutilized vacant office space.  So the next logical choice, Residential, Residential and more Residential. Live under the Shed would be my sales pitch.Â
As far as museum space, destination, and the likes. Lets move on for the simple fact that Downtown has that base covered from City Museum to Arch Grounds to sports stadiums to plazas to historical courthouse to sculpture garden to mall. What is lacking is not another destination, its better interconnectivity between them as Steve has highlighted.Â
Union Station as a train station is a dead idea no matter how it is spin. As JZ71 articulated, move forward.
The one thing that I would change. Daylight the former freight tunnel that Metrolink uses and get the current Union Station stop under the shed!! Its a worthy Metrolink investment that won’t break the bank. The next priority. Pursue residential on the south end of station as a means to creata an overall mixed use and the real possibility of having a true TOD!!!. Lets be honest. It already has space for retail in an overbuilt market (that summarizes downtown by itself), has an established hotel with meeting space, underutilized vacant office space. So the next logical choice, Residential, Residential and more Residential. Live under the Shed would be my sales pitch.
As far as museum space, destination, and the likes. Lets move on for the simple fact that Downtown has that base covered from City Museum to Arch Grounds to sports stadiums to plazas to historical courthouse to sculpture garden to mall. What is lacking is not another destination, its better interconnectivity between them as Steve has highlighted.