Or in the Midwest, where adaptive reuse has driven lavish restorations of big stations in St. Louis, now primarily a marketplace, and in Kansas City, where a science center is the main tenant. These are significant tourist attractions and landmarks. Yet such projects are not uniformly successful. Stations that attempted to cross over into the world of retail have faced problems. Indianapolis and Cincinnati both failed at attempts to go that route in the 1980s, when a bunch of stations were converted into festival marketplaces and shopping centers with no transportation use.
Retail use gets tired.
You have to do something new to keep getting people there. Today it's making a comeback with a mix of tenants, including go-kart racing and a banquet facility. A similar situation has occurred in Cincinnati, except the Art Deco-style Union Terminal has reopened as the Cincinnati Museum Center. Stations are community assets Rehabbed stations, regardless of their size, can benefit from even a modest amount of passenger service. But, he adds, it doesn't all have to be train travel.