Restoration
A number of businesses use the headhouse, while the United States Postal Service has been using the rear train concourse as a staging area for semi-trailer trucks serving the neighboring Downtown St. Paul Central Post Office. During the restoration, the USPS moved most of the truck operations to a bulk mail processing center in Eagan, Minnesota, making way for rehabilitation of the depot as a rail hub.
In June 2009, the Ramsey County Board approved purchasing the depot headhouse for $8.2 million, to serve as a Central Corridor light rail station and for future passenger rail use. The purchase paved the way for a $150 million restoration effort which is expected to return trains to the station in 2012.
Demolition of the Postal Service building that blocked track access to the concourse began in mid-March 2011.
The entire renovation project will cost about $237.5 million, of which $35 million will be provided by the US government through the TIGER program. As the multimodal transportation hub is being retooled, public tours will be returning to the St. Paul Union Depot as well.
Read more about this topic: Saint Paul Union Depot
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)