UNION STATION PROJECT TAKES STEPS IN RIGHT DIRECTION
Grand plans to increase capacity and improve the frustrating and uncomfortable passenger experience at Chicago’s 90- year- old Union Station have been announced and re- announced with precious little progress. It’s been mostly talk and little action.
On Friday, area transportation and elected officials gathered together once again to talk about their favorite subject. Only this time, there was at least a little progress to showcase: a renovated marble staircase in Union Station’s Great Hall made famous in the classic movie “The Untouchables.”
The new staircase — embedded in the memory of moviegoers because of the tumbling baby carriage rescued by Eliot Ness — highlighted $ 14 million worth of improvements in the works bankrolled by Amtrak and expected to be completed by the end of 2016.
They include relocating and enlarging a passenger lounge to double space available for business- class and sleeping- car passengers and allow expansion of seating for coach passengers at the concourse level.
The Amtrak- funded improvements also include: replacing door systems; upgrading an antiquated heating system; restoring the barrel- vaulted skylight that’s 219 feet long and hangs 115 feet above the Great Hall and turning a former women’s lounge into banquet and event space.
Those projects were not the only sign that the longstalled Union Station project is inching along.
The city, RTA, Metra and Amtrak have also agreed to jointly fund preliminary planning for 13 short- term improvements pinpointed by Chicago’s master plan for Union Station. A “request- for-- proposals” for “planning, historic review, preliminary engineering and up to 30 percent design” is posted at procurement. Amtrak. com.
In yet another sign of incremental progress, Amtrak is taking the first concrete steps to redevelop Amtrak-owned Union Station, the air rights above it and the land around the station.
A “request- for- information” has been issued and sent to local, regional and national developers. That signals the start of competition to identify firms capable of implementing a “master development plan, design, construction, financing and potential operation and maintenance of non- rail assets.” Those plans are likely to include a healthy mix of hotel, residential and commercial development.
On Friday, the usual suspects gathered once again in the Great Hall to talk about the desperate need to upgrade the nation’s third- largest rail terminal.
“The truth is, this station is fighting below its weight class. It can be a greater economic engine and job creator for the city of Chicago than it is today,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, using one of his favorite expressions.
RTA Board Chairman Kirk Dillard said he’s ridden in and out of Union Station for nearly three decades and knows firsthand how cramped and uncomfortable it is.
“I experience what riders experience firsthand, including broken water pipes that always seems to happen at 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon,” Dillard said.
“We’ve got to move this process forward, and we’ve got to do it and restore this building quickly for the comfort of our customers and their safety.”