DUS Cover Story, CC&D, 2014

Denver’s leap of faith pays off with Union Station renovation Unique funding, partnerships create model for revitalization of nation’s historic train stations

By Deborah Méndez Wilson

Outside Denver Union Station each January, Old West characters gather for the National Western Stock Show parade: Saddled rodeo queens adjust tiaras and cowboys calm longhorn steer beneath a neon orange sign atop the station that beckons, “Travel by Train.”

Until recently, Denver’s 1950s-era sign loomed over the spectacle like a dusty throwback honoring the waning days of American passenger rail services.

Increasingly, the emblem strikes city-dwellers like a portent of Denver’s future and a playful invocation from savvy soothsayers who imagined a new purpose for the city’s vintage train station.

Thirteen years in the making, the $480 million Union Station renovation is part of an ongoing national trend to restore historic train stations to their former glory for residents, commuters and visitors who want to live, work or play in the city. When Union Station reopens this year, Denver will get a sleek new multimodal crossroads for people, bikes, buses and trains of every stripe.

“We are witnessing the transformation of a major North American city right before our eyes,” says Regional Transportation District CEO and General Manager Phil Washington. “And it’s happening through transportation infrastructure investment.”

The unveiling begins this spring. On May 11, RTD will inaugurate its new bus concourse and close Market Street Station permanently. A day later, it will debut the Free MetroRide, a shuttle service via 18th and 19th streets to complement the 16th Street Free MallRide.

And, once fully operational, Union Station will return to its roots as a nexus for passenger trains. Amtrak has returned to the station, and more trains are coming. In 2016, RTD will open three new commuter rail lines—the East Rail Line between Union Station and Denver International Airport, the Gold Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge and a segment of the Northwest Rail Line to Westminster —thus introducing a new era of passenger rail travel to Colorado’s Front Range urban corridor.

Already, the impact of this RTD FasTracks undertaking and others is reverberating nationally, earning the transit program the moniker, “the Denver model” because of its unique funding strategies and collaborative clout. In fact, when his peers around the country ask for advice, Washington tells them to be more innovative in securing financing for large transit infrastructure.

Because it is home to the nation’s largest transit expansion project, Washington believes Denver has a lot to teach the rest of the country on how to develop and finance large public infrastructure. RTD’s Eagle P3, which includes the East Rail Line to DIA, is the largest public-private partnership, or P3, ever attempted on a transit project in the United States.

“You cannot do this alone. It has to be a partnership,” he says. “Our partners came to the table from all corners of the metro area, from the U.S. Department of Transportation, locally elected officials and members of our congressional delegation with a lot of funding and financing ideas.” DUS Cover Story, CC&D, 2014

Washington describes the decision to purchase Union Station in 2001 for $50 million as “stepping out on faith” three years ahead of the ballot proposal to expand transit across the region. For years, naysayers saw Union Station as a white elephant whose best days were behind it. Then, in 2004, Denver-area voters approved the RTD FasTracks program and new possibilities emerged.

“A lot of people have no clue about the grand scale of this renovation,” he says. “This is really a collaborative effort and a great example of what we can do as a region if we remain progressive and aggressive in our thinking and implementation.”

Regional Collaboration

Multiple variables merged soon after RTD’s Union Station purchase to create a unique transit-oriented redevelopment plan for the site. Foremost among them was the project’s complex compendium of partners and its multilayered funding model.

Major partners include RTD; the Colorado Department of Transportation, or CDOT; the City and County of Denver; the Denver Regional Council of Governments, or DRCOG; the Denver Union Station Metropolitan District; and the Denver Union Station Project Authority, or DUSPA, which represents the partners. Other partners include master developer Union Station Neighborhood Co. and Union Station Alliance, the team redeveloping the historic Union Station building.

The group leveraged $480 million in state and federal loans and grants through a precise accounting process that required the collective expertise of a finely tuned orchestra. All told, 11 different sources were tapped in the most intricate funding model ever to support a U.S. transit endeavor.

Annual payments on more than $300 million in federal loans under the TIFIA, or Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, and RRIF, or Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement program, will occur through a combination of RTD’s annual $12 million FasTracks bond payments and special tax revenues collected by the Downtown Denver Authority.

The Union Station project was the first to combine TIFIA and RRIF resources in its financing. Additionally, the RRIF loan was the first for a nonfreight project in the United States.

RTD brought in $208 million from its FasTracks program to expand transit across the region and $37 million from the sale of Market Street Station and other properties.

Other funding sources include $28 million in Obama administration stimulus funding; $57 million in grants for Projects of National and Regional Significance; and $26 million from a combination of DRCOG grants and state proceeds collected from vehicle registration and license plate fees.

Bill Mosher, senior managing director of Trammel Crow & Co., the commercial real estate investment firm acting as the DUSPA “owner’s representative” overseeing the master plan, admits Union Station has been the most elaborate project he’s ever worked on in terms of orchestration and funding allocation.

DUS Cover Story, CC&D, 2014

The partners were breaking ground on RTD’s bus concourse even as they were finalizing design and funding details. To ensure state, federal and other funds were applied accurately to eligible expenditures, DUSPA implemented a well-honed tracking system, he says.

The authority and its partners also held more than 125 public meetings over a six-year period to vet the team’s master planning and designs.

“We really were the arbitrators for when there were disputes or issues or when people needed direction,” Mosher says. “As time went along, everybody became pretty trusting. We all understood we were trying to get the same important project done and it all just came together.”

Union Station’s impact is expected to be felt near and far and Mosher and others close to it invoke the term “game-changer” to describe its potential to transform the region.

Transit improvements completed by Kiewit Infrastructure Co. include light rail and commuter rail tracks and facilities; the new 22-bay underground bus concourse; a soaring train hall canopy; and extensive work on roadways, plazas, bridges and connecting infrastructure.

Once the East Rail Line to DIA opens, an estimated 100,000 people are expected to travel in and out of Union Station daily, according to DUSPA projections.

“Lower downtown Denver will grow over the next 15 years in and around the station and it will be interesting to watch,” Mosher says.

The Denver Model

Transit managers around the country are eager to emulate Denver’s success, but replicating the Union Station model won’t be easy, says Jerry Nery, the RTD project manager who has led the transit aspects of the redevelopment for the past eight years.

After years of taking guff as a flat, featureless city with a staid urban core, Denver has found redemption in available acreage surrounding Union Station, a luxury in more densely populated cities with little room to grow or fill in. Surrounding property provides a mix of residential, commercial and retail that is conducive to new development that includes apartments, restaurants, office and retail space, and the first new supermarket in downtown Denver in years.

In all, 13 construction projects worth an estimated $750 million on more than 2 million square feet of space are going up near Union Station, all bringing new retail, residential and office space to lower downtown and providing a powerhouse anchor on the north side of the 16th Street Mall.

“The Central Platte Valley is a smart-growth area,” Nery says. “People want to recreate and live downtown and that’s what is attracting a lot of the residential.”

Later this year, Union Station Alliance will reopen the century-old train hall with Colorado-based restaurants, shops, a pub drawing Colorado brews, a new outdoor entertainment venue, gardens and the sumptuous new Crawford Hotel.

DUS Cover Story, CC&D, 2014

Dana Crawford, who sits on the Downtown Denver Partnership board and has been involved with Union Station’s redevelopment, says people have long held a romantic notion about Western hospitality, and when they arrive at Union Station, they are “quickly going to understand what this city is about.”

Crawford, the renowned Denver preservationist who led the creation of Larimer Square in the 1960s, the revival of the historic Oxford Hotel in the 1980s and is the namesake of the Crawford Hotel, says Union Station will be a welcoming place.

“It will be the city’s living room—and a gateway to the West,” she says.

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