Touring the Des Moines Union Depot
The last post here showed the old Des Moines Rock Island Depot. It is sort of a landmark, and in the pre-war days was the point of entry for new arrivals here.
Until recently, didn't know there was another old train depot downtown. So I had to see it. The same day we went downtown to see the politician train, Rob and I also took our bikes to scout out the depot.
It's still there. From the Des Moines Register:
It had been closed up, apparently, but somebody unbricked one entrance...
and took the boards out of some windows.
A self-guided tour was called for.
It's hard to have great confidence that it is being taken care of.
It adjoins another commercial building, but it doesn't appear to be used at all. I wonder if it could be fixed up. It appears to still be structurally sound -- it has to be, to still be standing given how neglected it is, and how it looks like it almost burned down.
It might work as a coffee shop, or a very small restaurant, or a little (1682 ft) shop, maybe, or a bar. Its location doesn't help, as it is just far enough away from the East Village shops and bars to keep it out of their traffic patterns. I hope somebody figures out something soon, though, as it might not stand too many more years of abuse and neglect.
Until recently, didn't know there was another old train depot downtown. So I had to see it. The same day we went downtown to see the politician train, Rob and I also took our bikes to scout out the depot.
It's still there. From the Des Moines Register:
Rehabbers Club records show that only four years after the East Side Union Railroad Depot was built in 1900, it came under scrutiny for being too small to accommodate the growing number of passengers using it. At the time, four railroads stopped at the station: the Wabash Railroad; Chicago Great Western Railway; the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad; and the Des Moines, Iowa Falls and Northern Railway.Polk County records show that it was sold by Norfolk Southern Railroad in 1997, and it is now owned by an LLC called Two Brothers Holdings LLC. It's valued at an improbable $142,000 ($72,000 for the land).
It had been closed up, apparently, but somebody unbricked one entrance...
and took the boards out of some windows.
A self-guided tour was called for.
It's hard to have great confidence that it is being taken care of.
It adjoins another commercial building, but it doesn't appear to be used at all. I wonder if it could be fixed up. It appears to still be structurally sound -- it has to be, to still be standing given how neglected it is, and how it looks like it almost burned down.
It might work as a coffee shop, or a very small restaurant, or a little (1682 ft) shop, maybe, or a bar. Its location doesn't help, as it is just far enough away from the East Village shops and bars to keep it out of their traffic patterns. I hope somebody figures out something soon, though, as it might not stand too many more years of abuse and neglect.
posted by Joe at 9:15 PM
5 Comments:
Why don't you save it yourself? Start a campaign to restore that little gem of a rail station.
Peggy, that's an interesting suggestion.
If I had the cash and the time to spend on restoring it, I'd do it myself. I could probably buy it for maybe the $140,000 assessed value, or something like that. Then I could spend another $100,000-$250,000 fixing it and getting the tax credits to help me cover the cost. by this point I have $300,000-500,000 invested.
Now I need to find a way to make it worth the investment. I could set up a business myself. But that would require tons of time, on top of my day job, and Vickie would kill me before the stress did.
Or, I could find somebody to lease it from me for $2-3000 per month to give me at least a break-even return on the thing. Then they would get to work the 60-100 hour weeks to make a restaurant, bar, what have you, work.
The economics are daunting. And the city is broke, it can't do it -- and unless it pays for itself, you are only putting off the day of demolition a little.
Des Moines has some brilliant re-habbers who would know how to take on a project like this. If they don't, it probably means the thing just can't make it. And while that would make me sad, losing my money, or other people's money, in a failed rehab would make me sadder.
Crowd funding!
Crowdfunding? Peggy, I think I just run in the wrong crowd!
My son Ian raised something in the region of $30,000 ($32,818.00) through Fundable for the start-up costs of his brewery in Chicago.
Is there a Des Moines historical society or a preservation group that is keen to preserve buildings of historical importance?
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