Washington Union Station property issue

Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
MARC Rider said:
Uh, doesn't Amtrak own Union Station?
Click to expand...
No. Only the platform and tracks via Washington Terminal Company which it owns 99% of.

The building and parking lots are owned by the Federal DOT (that in effect would be us, the federal taxpayers, such as it is), and the leasing arrangement which Amtrak wishes to take over before the leasing contract expires between the private company and FDOT is at the center of all this. I don’t fully understand the complexities of the relationship between FDOT, the leasing company and Amtrak. It has always seemed to be one of those murky corners, and Amtrak has tended to try to throw its weight around.

A while back Amtrak tried to flex its muscles via the majority ownership of Washington Terminal Company to try to deny VRE access to Union Station. It was brought to heel when apparently Congress threatened it with dire consequence if it does not cease and desist. My possibly naive assumption at present is that Amtrak is doing this with the consent of FDOT. If not then they are bound to fail in their endeavors. And even if not they can still fail if the big boss on the hill decides to intervene against Amtrak.

It should be noted that the article is a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece. They re known to conveniently misreport stuff in opinion pieces from time to time. So I am just waiting to see what actual verified details come out.
 
Last edited:
It sort of sounded like they a) wanted to renovate/re-lease commercial spaces or take some for Amtrak and train functions or b) force lessee to lease out spaces and improve it (there is a lot of vacant retail at the moment and they may not be quick at leasing it out).
 
jis said:
No. Only the platform and tracks via Washington Terminal Company which it owns 99% of.%
Click to expand...
On Wikipedia it mentions 99.7% owned by Amtrak and the other 0.3% is owned by the employees.

How did this 0.3% come about and what can the employees do with it?
Can they weld any power on WTC?
or does it pay any dividends that can go into an employee fund?
Is there any agreement between union employees and non-union management to divvy up the 0.3%?

So many questions.

There was very little retail that I saw open last Memorial Day. If it is not being leased it should go back to Amtrak to see if someone can do better. The leasing agent should be bound to either lease the space or turn it over to someone that can and will.

Malls are not the hot spots they once were but there is no reason Union Station can't be in better shape with more going on with retail, restaurants, and such.
There is a saying about doing a certain thing or getting off the pot. That should be part of the contract.
 
FDOT means US DOT?

Amtrak was making a lot of desperate deals back then. As a previous post noted, the US President had written its obit. I assume the WSJ piece mentions the leaseholder was a notoriously bad mall landlord and manager, at WAS and at his other major one. It's being worked out in a court in NYC (US Bankruptcy, I think). In another deal, Amtrak sold the air rights from the station to H Street, where the streetcar starts.

The big plan works under the 50 foot high air right over the tracks, extending a concourse to H Street and demolishing the garage. I find the garage and its services useful, but no matter - and it's a not-great walk and then worse platform for the streetcar, as mentioned in the other post this week. (The distance is more an issue than the execution for me, and probably many residents - tourists would disagree). That post is also correct about the many new tall developments northward across H Street, dominating the scene to the horizon. It's a scale of living that appeals to many young people, I am told by a DC resident.

You could take the budget of the big plan for WAS, eliminate most of the retail, put station stuff there, build a half-wide concourse to H Street without demolishing the garage (parking, bus, car-rental), and still save money.

I was surprised some of the nostalgia about WAS was looking back five years. By then the movie theater had closed the mall was no longer the very popular mall of an earlier era. Sometimes I think Apple Stores are the only thing keeping malls alive, those few that have them. They seem to be always the most crowded store. Wonder if they even have to pay rent. (Grand Central has one, WAS does not.)
 
Have heard all sorts of wild stories. Main one is lease holder will not allow Amtrak to make any permanent improvements to the station. One improvements Amtrak wants is to the entrances to the 1st street tunnel. Some distance from the entrance into the tunnel is supposedly covered by the lease.

Company holding lease wants outrageous concessions by Amtrak to allow Amtrak to do necessary repairs / improvements?? If that is so time for station to be fully controlled by the one user Amtrak.
 
west point said:
Have heard all sorts of wild stories. Main one is lease holder will not allow Amtrak to make any permanent improvements to the station. One improvements Amtrak wants is to the entrances to the 1st street tunnel. Some distance from the entrance into the tunnel is supposedly covered by the lease.

Company holding lease wants outrageous concessions by Amtrak to allow Amtrak to do necessary repairs / improvements?? If that is so time for station to be fully controlled by the one user Amtrak.
Click to expand...
Except Amtrak is not the only user. MARC & VRE use the station. And to an extent, WMATA (Red line)
 
I haven't been up into the station in decades, while passing thru on trains, but I recall what an acclaimed place it was, when they rebuilt it from the disastrous "National Visitor's Center" of the Bicentennial era. People would actually come into the station to shop and dine, even if they weren't taking any trains.
What happened to that iteration? Did it get rebuilt again later on? 🤔
 
railiner said:
I haven't been up into the station in decades, while passing thru on trains, but I recall what an acclaimed place it was, when they rebuilt it from the disastrous "National Visitor's Center" of the Bicentennial era. People would actually come into the station to shop and dine, even if they weren't taking any trains.
What happened to that iteration? Did it get rebuilt again later on? 🤔
Click to expand...
No physical changes I know of, other than some concourse improvements, and replacing the two-story restaurant cylinder in the historic hall with a coffee shop window. The powerful Commission of Fine Arts had a report that said it disrupted sight lines. Exclusive parties are the only functional use of the main hall.

The very popular mall-with-a-movie-theater era ended with the same issues as other malls: economics and feeling safe. As far as I know. And likely mismanagement.

I recall the remnants of the Bicentennial era, trooping around the perimeter of that pit on wooden catwalks to get to the trains. Last month I ran into some Italian tourists who had logically taken the corner stairwell, under the big letters "Stairs" in the main hall, to get to a Flix bus. Upstairs it puts you out in open restaurant seating, from which it's hard to find the walkway to the garage. Nice view of the backs of the Centurions though.

Late at night and early morning, workers check tickets at the entrance to WAS. It's open 24 hours. They were checking tickets when I went in for the first train of the day. I had parked at 4am, and gone for a walk around the east side of the Capitol. They didn't check my ticket coming into the station proper from the parking garage, but at $25 a day I guess you get privileges.
 
Last edited:
JamesWhitcombRiley said:
No physical changes I know of, other than some concourse improvements, and replacing the two-story restaurant cylinder in the historic hall with a coffee shop window. The powerful Commission of Fine Arts had a report that said it disrupted sight lines. Exclusive parties are the only functional use of the main hall.

The very popular mall-with-a-movie-theater era ended with the same issues as other malls: economics and feeling safe. As far as I know. And likely mismanagement.

I recall the remnants of the Bicentennial era, trooping around the perimeter of that pit on wooden catwalks to get to the trains. Last month I ran into some Italian tourists who had logically taken the corner stairwell, under the big letters "Stairs" in the main hall, to get to a Flix bus. Upstairs it puts you out in open restaurant seating, from which it's hard to find the walkway to the garage. Nice view of the backs of the Centurions though.

Late at night and early morning, workers check tickets at the entrance to WAS. It's open 24 hours. They were checking tickets when I went in for the first train of the day. I had parked at 4am, and gone for a walk around the east side of the Capitol. They didn't check my ticket coming into the station proper from the parking garage, but at $25 a day I guess you get privileges.
Click to expand...
I don't know about the artistic taste of the "Commission of Fine Arts." I find that the Great Hall has become an empty sterile space after they got rid of the restaurant in the center, which I used to patronize, as well as the seating, which was there in the grand old days when everyone rode the train.

The food court in the basement is recovering from the Covid shock, but it's still pretty empty. As I recall, back in its heyday 20 or 30 years ago, most of the food court business were local, and some were quite quirky and interesting. I'd actually go over there sometimes to get lunch. Those started closing and were replaced by chains. My recollection is that things started going downhill 5-10 years ago, and by the time I retired in 2019, there were problems with homeless people (who are generally not the issue in Washington that they were in the 1980s and 90s), and while they are mostly harmless, this does discourage people from going there unless they need to catch a train. I always saw the place as full of people, but I was passing through during rush hour, and, of course, most of us were hurrying through to catch a train, not necessarily shopping, though I did eat dinner there on the nights that I stayed late to work out. It seems that the one good thing they did was to open a Walgreen's drug store in the basement level. I actually used to shop there quite a bit. Other than that, I suspect that online shopping did a number to a lot of the mall business, like it did everywhere. Thus, the management should have emphasized businesses selling stuff that was harder to get online. That's why I think the drugstore was a good. Also, eateries, and they used to have a shoe repair place, and a post office, other stuff that you can't get online. Maybe they should have opened a hair salon, too. Anyway, maybe the trial will reveal some information about decisions the management company made that didn't work in the best interests of using the place as a train station. I guess wee will see.
 
MARC Rider said:
I find that the Great Hall has become an empty sterile space after they got rid of the restaurant in the center, which I used to patronize, as well as the seating, which was there in the grand old days when everyone rode the train.
Click to expand...
The restaurant in the center must've been before my time, and I can't say I've ever been bothered by its absence. The lack of benches that would allow people to sit there and enjoy the beautiful architecture while waiting for trains is bizarre, though.
MARC Rider said:
problems with homeless people (who are generally not the issue in Washington that they were in the 1980s and 90s), and while they are mostly harmless, this does discourage people from going there unless they need to catch a train.
Click to expand...
Perhaps this is the reason for the lack of seats. It certainly is why Moynihan in NYC has none - but that explanation makes a lot less sense if Amtrak is suing to 𝘢𝘥𝘥 seats elsewhere in the station.
 
cirdan said:
Isn't the big guy on the hill supposedly pro Amtrak?
Click to expand...
Occasionally. Do not get fooled by the recent largess. It is most likely an aberration. The current mess is entirely a creation of said big guys on the Hill. Usually when they unravel a mess, they do so by creating another to hide the previous 0ne under. So let us just wait and watch where this goes. Hopefully the likes of RPA and us collectively will be able to get a better outcome somehow.
 
b1xn00d said:
The restaurant in the center must've been before my time, and I can't say I've ever been bothered by its absence. The lack of benches that would allow people to sit there and enjoy the beautiful architecture while waiting for trains is bizarre, though.

Perhaps this is the reason for the lack of seats. It certainly is why Moynihan in NYC has none - but that explanation makes a lot less sense if Amtrak is suing to 𝘢𝘥𝘥 seats elsewhere in the station.
Click to expand...
The term for this is “Hostile Architecture” Hostile architecture - Wikipedia
 
The loss of specialty food locations on the food court makes one wonder. Did the lease holder not renew their leases to allow for the ubiquitous nation wide fast food joints with one kind of barely standard fare that all tastes the same?
 
UserNameRequired said:
The term for this is “Hostile Architecture” Hostile architecture - Wikipedia
Click to expand...
The powers that be (Fine Arts Commission, etc.) want the historic main hall empty, otherwise there would be seating for ticketed passengers there. Or maybe that photo of the train bursting through scared them! It's a walk through and gaze to be amazed experience.

Public homelessness came to DC before many other cities. People want their freedom, so they went to (or stayed in) DC where they couldn't be picked up, back in the days when that was a thing. Many slept on the warm sidewalk grates in the winter, making it commonplace observation at the time: the situation, the irony, the legal thing. It was in the Cold War, and was a subject of propaganda from the other side. Back then, unlike today, 99% of people ignored foreign propaganda.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top