If all of the parts fall into place, Union Station and its environs may soon look very different.
The developer will set a guaranteed maximum transit construction price somewhere around $477 million with general contractor Kiewit Construction, and building will commence by spring.
Courtesy of the Union Station Neighborhood Company
An artist's rendering of what Union Station will look like in 2012.
anthony camera
Peter Park (left), Cole Finegan and Tom Gougeon help keep the project on track.
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The light-rail terminal by the freight rail line is expected to be operational by fall 2009, along with an extended Mall Shuttle route running to the new terminal. A year later, the plaza in front of the station should be complete, and two years after that, the commuter rail platform area and the underground bus facility should come online, all of it ready to handle the new FasTracks rail corridors running into the station.
"Four years is not a lot of time," admits Cannon. "But the good news is there are a lot of people who have been working very hard on this for a very long time."
Marilee Utter, one of the region's authorities on transit-oriented development, welcomes the project's progress — though she offers a note of warning.
"The people behind this have a lot of good instincts. They have hired great designers," she say. "On the other hand, everyone is acting poor...money is really tight, so I hope we don't make any short-sighted decisions."
The pedestrian connection concept only works if it is designed well, she adds. "If people start cutting corners with materials or connections, that will hurt it. If the historic station is not part of the functional connectivity, that will be a travesty. The heart and soul of the whole district should be that building. If the transit doesn't work as a seamless connection for people, that's a problem. If the development isn't dense enough, that's a problem. If the public space doesn't become a great space, that's a problem."
Many Denverites have personal memories of the station's years as the city's proud civic gateway; others, who are younger, yearn for a chance to earn such memories of their own. These sentiments underlie the technical planning and number crunching around the station, fueling passionate excitement — as well as feisty disagreements — about the redevelopment. "Everybody has a crazy story about the building," says Utter, who says the first time she ever saw snow was while riding a train into Union Station. "It's just amazing how deeply people care about what happens to it. I think that's really a mandate to invest in it and do it right."
