photo by: Mike Yoder

The Santa Fe depot in East Lawrence is shown in this file photo from 2013.

Three years after Lawrence won a grant to revitalize the Santa Fe depot in East Lawrence, the city, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and Amtrak are still hashing out an ownership agreement for the space.

The depot, a one-story, mid-century modern structure built in 1956, is located to the north of where Seventh Street curves into New Jersey Street. It’s currently owned by the railway and leased to Amtrak, with Southwest Chief Amtrak trains coming through twice daily. According to data from Amtrak, in 2015 the annual ridership at the station was 8,319.

In 2013, Lawrence was awarded a federal transportation grant that will pay for 80 percent of the approximately $1.5 million cost of renovating the building. At the time, city leaders hoped the restoration would start by the end of 2014.

Last July, the City Commission directed then-Interim City Manager Diane Stoddard to move forward with an agreement with BNSF to transfer ownership of the depot to the city and for the city to lease the land the depot sits on. Commissioners also told the city to move forward with an agreement that leases the depot to Amtrak, but allows the city to use the building during times Amtrak is not.

Those agreements all have to be executed at the same time, and what’s holding up the transfer is “centimeters and inches,” said Brandon McGuire, assistant to the city manager.

Before it signs an agreement, Amtrak must ensure the city’s renovation plans meet federal accessibility standards. There’s been back-and-forth with the city, which wants the renovations to also meet requirements for historic preservation because the grant depends on it.

“We’re literally talking centimeters and inches, and when you get down to that level of detail… it’s been a bureaucratic process,” McGuire said. “We’re working with folks in Philadelphia and Chicago and the Dallas area, so it’s all by conference call and emails and letters; it’s taken awhile.”

McGuire said he couldn’t speculate on when the agreements would be finalized, noting it could take “a couple more weeks or quite a bit longer.”

In April, the City Commission had to approve a 24-month extension for the project’s site plan, so it wouldn’t expire.

And while negotiations continue, it recently came to the city’s attention that the depot’s air conditioning unit is broken, leaving passengers to wait in the heat for trains that come through once in the morning and once at night.

Because the depot hasn’t yet changed hands, the city was able only to notify Amtrak’s district manager for the area, who is not locally stationed. City officials have done the same when lights on the sign went out and when the grass needed to be mowed, McGuire said. Amtrak usually contacts local contractors to make the repairs.

A representative for Amtrak could not be reached Wednesday.

“It’s really challenging and frustrating for us when we see things like that and we have this beautiful property that serves as a functioning passenger rail system and we know the AC is out in the middle of a heat wave and we can’t do anything about it,” McGuire said. “We would be very responsive to that if we had the ownership of the building. I think Amtrak responds to those as quickly as they can, but they don’t have a local presence here.”

Renovation plans for the depot include a new roof, heating and cooling systems, electrical work, masonry repairs, landscaping and repairs to the parking lot and sidewalks.

The grant for the project is federal money awarded by the Kansas Department of Transportation.

The cost to the city of operating and maintaining the station has been estimated at about $54,000.

While the station will continue to be used by Amtrak, it could also be open to the public during times other than when the train rolls through, McGuire said.

The city first sought to acquire the building to save it from rapid deterioration and maintain its history and viability as a transportation facility, according to a revitalization plan from 2011. Stan Hernly, a Lawrence architect who sits on the city’s Historic Resources Commission, is to lead the renovation project.

“We’re so excited about this project, to get it rolling, because I think it really will be just an awesome thing to have the station open on a consistent basis,” he said. “There are all sorts of uses for that building that we haven’t even really considered yet.”