Rescued from the edge

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If ever there was a model of a decaying station brought back to vibrancy, it would be in Kansas City.

Singers film music videos in Union Station’s Grand Plaza. Travelers board Amtrak trains bound for Los Angeles or St. Louis. Schoolchildren arrive by the busload to tour its science museum. And the building, the country’s largest train station outside New York when it opened, has been at the center of a renaissance in Kansas City’s formerly barren downtown.

Just a decade ago, the station was on the verge of bankruptcy and closure. Its renovation in the 1990s, funded by taxpayers in both Kansas and Missouri, was seen as an architectural success, but a financial failure. The nonprofit group that ran the property was millions of dollars in debt and unable to pay its utility bills.

“It was the single best economic development tool in the history of Kansas City and the worst business model on the face of the earth,” said George Guastello, the chief executive who brought in new tenants and saved Union Station from closing.

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Put up a parking lot

CRESTON, Iowa — The year was 1970, the ornate brick depot had been abandoned and the mayor of this city in southern Iowa wanted to tear it down for a parking lot.

“We really need more off-street parking in Creston,” the mayor, Marvin Taylor, told The Des Moines Tribune that year.

Creston did not embrace his plan. This city had been founded as a camp for railroad workers during the westward expansion and its train station, built in 1899, shaped the skyline. A group of residents agitated to save the depot, early members of a preservationist movement that many attribute to outrage over the demolition of New York’s Penn Station in 1963.
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