Restored Railway Station Is Envisioned

New life could be breathed into Seattle's aging and rundown King Street Station through a proposal to make it into a transportation center for buses and intercity and commuter passenger trains.

Imagine the station as a hub where a person could get off a long-distance train, or one from Tacoma or Auburn, and board a bus for Yakima or Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Imagine it, with its impressive red-brick clock tower, restored to its former status as a grand terminal near Pioneer Square.

A number of officials support this goal - and their ideas appear to be gaining momentum.

The city is about to apply for a $50,000 grant to study the proposal.

State Transportation Secretary Duane Berentson says the federal government might fund the study, which would be done by the city's Office for Long-Range Planning.

City Councilman George Benson, who was responsible for starting Seattle's waterfront streetcar line, is in the forefront of those favoring a transportation center.

He got the idea from the Washington Association of Railroad Passengers, and since has held talks with representatives of bus companies, Amtrak, airlines and the Burlington Northern Railroad, which owns the station and adjacent property.

Benson and Charles Mott, president of the passenger association, want the station to be transformed into a shining symbol of integrated transportation services.

Time has been hard on the King Street Station, whose four massive clock faces in the tower have stood watching over the tracks and former tide flats at the south end of downtown since the station was opened in May 1906.

Over the years, the ornate interior of the brick and masonry building has been cut up, partitioned off and covered up.

Its terrazzo floor is cracked in places. Its high ceiling decorated with terra-cotta figures, where glittering chandeliers once hung, is hidden by a flat false ceiling.

Gone are its restaurant and coffee shop, now replaced by the Sitting Duck Espresso Co., in a little kiosk in the waiting room.

Even the Burlington Northern Railroad, which owns the station, has moved out, putting its main offices and dispatch center elsewhere and leaving the two upper floors vacant and creaking in the silence.

Yet the Amtrak trains come and go - four in and four out each day - and in recent years there has been a resurgence in the number of passengers they carry.

The waiting room is sometimes packed with people, particularly during periods of holiday travel.

Construction of additional facilities for buses and commuter trains, together with renovation of the station, could be a multimillion-dollar venture. Not a lot of adjacent property is available, but expressions of support for a transportation center are being heard:

-- Greyhound Line Inc. is interested in moving its Seattle bus terminal to an expanded King Street Station.

``We are very supportive of that intermodal concept. We think that's what the traveling public wants and, where we can, we are trying to get into them,'' said Chris Ensenberger, a Greyhound real-estate official in Dallas.

-- Gray Line of Seattle, which runs tour and regularly scheduled buses, is interested, too. A transportation center would be a logical place for Gray Line to locate, said general manager David Beagle.

-- Metro is studying the prospects of running commuter trains between the King Street Station and Auburn, and possibly as far as Tacoma or Olympia, on Burlington Northern tracks, but until now there has been no great impetus to proceed with that project. There is also interest in high-speed rail travel.

Richard Sandaas, Metro executive director, recently wrote to Mott, the passenger association's president:

``As these ideas develop it is important to consider linkages between a long-distance intercity high-speed rail project and Metro's urban rapid-transit system. A possible role for the King Street Station in this regard should be considered.''

Burlington Northern is willing to participate in the establishment of a transportation center at the King Street Station, said Loren Mueller, general manager for the Pacific Division of the railroad. But he noted that the proposal is only in the concept stage now.

The station was built by railroad baron James Hill, the ``empire builder'' of the Great Northern Railroad.

Inspired by the campanile of the Piazza de San Marco in Venice, Italy, the station is on the National Register of Historic Places. That preserves it, but it doesn't stop its long, slow deterioration.

``It's sad. It's a beautiful building,'' said W. ``Peach'' Smith, Amtrak's district supervisor, as she pointed out the modern flaws and now hidden old refinements of the station, accompanied by Mott.

Mott believes the time has come to ride to the rescue of the station and restore it to its original luster, while establishing a transportation center there.

Other cities have set some splendid examples of restoring train stations. Union Station in Washington, D.C., is now a jewel in the nation's capital.

The former Canadian Pacific Railway station in Vancouver, B.C., has also been restored, and similar work is nearing completion on Portland's Union Station.

``The King Street Station,'' Mott asserted, ``is an embarrassment to the city; and for a city with aspirations of becoming an international-class city, it doesn't wash.

``This thing will finally take off,'' he said of the need to restore the station and give it more transportation uses, ``when the Legislature creates regional authorities that can deal with these kinds of problems.''