Thanksgiving break student travelers will see changes at the old Amtrak station that will officially "re-grand open" Nov. 26.
Finishing touches on the renovation of the 42-year-old station at North Fifth Street and West St. Paul Avenue are now taking place. City and state officials said they hope the modern station will serve as a welcoming point for visitors to the city and will better link the various parts of downtown.
Reconstruction of the old Amtrak facility – now named the Milwaukee Intermodal Station – began in July 2006. Besides Amtrak service, the new station will also be the departure and arrival spot for Greyhound bus lines. The facility is expected to serve more than one million travelers, said Ron Adams, chief of railroads and harbors for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
"This is going to be dramatically different than the building before," Adams said. "The interior is completely remodeled from what it was before."
Passengers now enter a three-story atrium to buy tickets and board trains. Plans are in the works for a first-level food court. Offices will be located on the second floor and the DOT's statewide traffic operations center will be headquartered on the third floor, Adams said.
A parking lot west of the station has about 300 spaces, Adams said.
The $16.9 million project is funded by $8 million in state and federal funds and $2.9 million from Milwaukee Intermodal Partners LLC, the facility's private developer, Adams said. The city contributed $6 million as a result of Tax Increment Financing. TIF is a system of financing in which the city uses revenue gained from a project to pay off the money initially borrowed to fund it.
Amtrak currently operates seven round-trips each day Monday through Saturday and six trips on Sunday on its Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha line. An Amtrak study released last month found ridership increased to 595,336 riders on its Hiawatha line between October 2006 and 2007. Amtrak expects further increases as a result of the new station and its additional connections with buses, said Marc Magliari, Amtrak spokesman. Amtrak does not plan to add additional routes to its Hiawatha service, Magliari said.
Meanwhile, regional leaders have discussed possible Milwaukee to Kenosha and Milwaukee to Madison commuter lines but funding sources are indeterminate. Adams said that the station is capable of handling an increased passenger presence that additional rail lines could bring.
From the new station, Greyhound offers 15 daily routes to various cities including Minneapolis, Green Bay, St. Louis and Chicago, according to a Greyhound Bus Lines press release from Oct. 12.
In order to join the station with "traditional" downtown, street improvements are being made along Fifth Street, said Chris Fornal, planning and development engineer for the city's Department of Public Works.
The city is making street lighting enhancements and creating other sidewalk amenities between the station and Wisconsin Avenue. Planners hope improvements to Fifth Street will create a gateway into downtown, Fornal said.
The new facility features large angled white beams inside a 7,500-square-foot atrium. Large rectangular windows cover the face of the building from top to bottom. Adams said the new facility is more attractive than the old one.
"People thought it was a dark place," Adams said. "It was not an inviting facility that the city and state wanted to have, especially as people came into our largest city."
What used to be an old train depot on the outskirts of downtown is now expanding into downtown itself, Fornal said. The Sixth Street Bridge will connect the station with the forthcoming Harley-Davidson Museum at West Sixth and Canal Streets, slated to open summer 2008.