New uptown Gateway Station for Amtrak will take longer than expected to finish
It’s been about three years since ground broke on the roughly $80 million Gateway Station, a planned transit hub of light rail, bus service and a new Amtrak station.
While construction appears to be moving along, including building new platforms and tracks, the new station isn’t expected to be completed until early 2023.
That was part of an update given Wednesday to the state Board of Transportation on what will be a massive development of a multi-acre site in uptown.
Previous estimates showed that the project would be completed in 2022, the Observer has reported.
But ongoing impacts from COVID-19, supply chain issues and weather “all play a factor in the project being finished,” Katie Trout, a spokeswoman with NCDOT, told the Observer in an email when asked about the later completion date for the project.
The estimate for the earliest passenger service to start is around 2024 or 2025, according to Trout.
The first phase of the project, including building bridges, train tracks, a concourse and platforms is 80% to 90% done, Jason Orthner, rail division director with the North Carolina Transportation Department, told the board.
The cost will be $80 million to $90 million, funded through local, state and federal dollars including a $30 million federal grant. The city of Charlotte has also pledged $33 million from its capital budget for the station, the Observer previously reported.
‘Kind of like an airport’
As of now, no Amtrak trains stops in the heart of uptown.
The current station stops about a mile and a half north off Tryon Street. It doesn’t have great access, is “extremely” undersized and is prone to flooding, Orthner said.
The work on the new station is just a couple blocks from Bank of America Stadium and spreads over roughly a third of a mile.
The project is expected to increase ridership by 20%, Orthner said, at what is already one of the busiest stations in North Carolina. In 2019, the current station handled about 200,000 passengers, he said.
A daily train service between Raleigh and Charlotte is expected to increase from three trains a day to four, he said. There is also a train that runs daily between Charlotte and New York.
The new station site is located near a streetcar stop as well as a station along the proposed silver line light rail.
For passenger train service, including for Amtrak, crews are building two new 2,000-foot tracks between 8th and 3rd streets and reserving room for a third track. It will also have an 1,100-foot long passenger boarding platform.
“Kind of like an airport, it will have multiple gates so you can have departing and arriving trains simultaneously,” Orthner said.
Second phase for Gateway Station
State transportation board members also got an update on the project’s second phase, which will add a public plaza and four towers with residential units with affordable housing, retail and a hotel.
Last year, the city selected Charlotte Gateway Partners, a joint venture with Spectrum Properties of Charlotte and Republic Metropolitan of Washington, D.C., as the lead developers.
The city will be responsible for funding a new bus facility, a trail to help bring each block together, a public plaza and parking, Lilias Folkes John, public private partnerships advisor for the city of Charlotte, told the board. A master development agreement will be presented to the City Council this fall, she said.
The development is expected to stand for 100 years, John said, and be the new “iconic symbol” of the heart of Charlotte.
