Railroad Forums 

  • Report on King Street Station from KING-TV

  • Discussion related to railroading activities past and present in the American Pacific Northwest (including Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia).
Discussion related to railroading activities past and present in the American Pacific Northwest (including Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia).

Moderator: lbshelby

 #674011  by Vincent
 
KING-TV (Seattle) ran a short story today on the progress of the King Street Station restoration project. The story states that the City of Seattle has a budget of $26 million for the restoration, with $4 million spent already. I walk by KSS almost daily and it's great to see the old station coming back to life, I'll be real happy when the clock tower is working again.

Link to the story: http://www.king5.com/video/featured-ind ... vid=364218
 #678533  by Otto Vondrak
 
It's amazing what's behind some of these drop-ceilings from the 1960s... King Street will be fantastic once the work is complete.
 #682582  by wigwagfan
 
I recall going into Seattle on a semi-regular basis on Amtrak in 2000-2001 when I had moved from Portland to Kalispell. They were pretty optimistic things would be complete around 2003?

I'm ready to say tear the thing down if it's such a pain in the rear end to get done. Union Station can serve as the historical reference and remake King Street into a 21st century (architecturally) transportation hub. Compared with Portland Union Station, the concourse is cramped yet handles more passengers; connections with other transportation modes seems disjointed and the overall layout is akin to an isolated island. The rest of the neighborhood grew up, but King Street Station refuses to.
 #682953  by Vincent
 
^^ Oh boy, that's some crazy talk! The Seattle Process would turn the station rebuilding into a 10 year nightmare of planning and design reviews and we'd end up with some sort of neo-Classical, Bauhaus-influenced, Post-Modern piece-of-crap train station that nobody would be happy with. Ever seen the Convention Center extension over Pike Street? Yuk! That's what we'd get.

But seriously, the plans for the new KSS will have an expanded waiting room and the ticket counter will move over to the existing baggage area. Passengers will be able to buy their tickets and check their luggage in one stop--genius!! The stairway from Jackson Street will be re-opened there may be some restaurants or food service available at the station. Progress is slow, but it's going to be nice when it's finally done.
 #712344  by Vincent
 
The clocks on the King Street Station tower are functioning again.

Here's a report from Q13Fox (Seattle): http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-090109- ... 9826.story
SEATTLE - For the first time in over a decade Seattle's King Street Station clock tower has the correct time on all four faces.

Today mayor greg nickels threw the switch to set it in motion.

With a flip of the switch and the Jimi Hendrix song, "All Along The Watchtower" playing in the background, the the old clock's gears and machinery started up again.

Repairs to the historic 1906 timepiece mark the end of Phase One of the train depot's renovation.
Phase Two will address seismic issues and improve the waiting area.
 #820880  by Vincent
 
Some serious renovation work has finally begun! Crews went in and removed the old escalators that were on the west side of the building. They were blocked from public view, but if you know the layout of KSS, when you enter KSS through the main doors the lobby and ticket counters are to the right. The escalators would have been to the left. Here's a slide show of the demolition work (the first few slides show the work being done in the area above and around the existing lobby, the demolition slides are later in the show): http://www.slideshare.net/allieger/june ... m=ss_embed
 #821752  by wigwagfan
 
Neat pictures there, Vincent.

It is just astounding as to the amount of time needed for this station rehab; it's nice to see something actually being done. Will the escalator be replaced, though? I always hate the walk out of the station to get anywhere - it seems that no matter what way you go, it's a roundabout way to get anywhere with the risk of finding a roadblock and having to backtrack some other way........
 #821811  by Vincent
 
It sure seems like the City hired somebody's away-at-college nephew to do the work during his spare time. I've seen some tiny, incremental changes (install scaffolding, build fence, etc.) over the last year; but finally, some serious work seems to be underway.


Included in the phase that has now begun, a hidden marble and granite staircase will be exposed, rehabbed and then used to connect the lobby to Jackson Street. Once that staircase is open, it should be much simpler and quicker to navigate to and from the station to downtown or the International District. It also looks like the project to convert the parking area on the north side of Qwest Field into housing and office/retail space might be breaking ground some time this year. That project will build four 20 story buildings in the space that is currently used for stadium parking.
 #827340  by Vincent
 
The acoustical tile drop ceiling has now been removed from the lobby area. Passengers can view the original ornate ceiling and see how much restoration work is left to be done. The removal also gives the station's lobby a proper echo-echo-echo.