Although the Main Street Metra station sees most of its traffic in the morning, the station was unusually busy Thursday evening. About 30 people gathered for an open house to inform the community of plans to restore the building to its original design.
John Szostek, executive director of Evanston’s Custer Street Fair, the group currently headquarted at the station, said he hopes the station will become more than just a stop for commuters.
The $2.8 million project, set to begin in December and projected to take a year to complete, includes the addition of a second waiting room, doubling the available indoor area for riders in the morning.
After the morning rush, the station will be open to classes and community organizations, also providing a 50- to 55-seat venue for Piccolo Theatre, a local production group, Szostek said.
“This was a great opportunity … to turn (the station) into a cultural center,” Szostek said.
Other modifications to the building will include changing from a boiler to a gas heating system, installing an indoor elevator and adding a heated wheelchair-accessible ramp.
The brick street and embankment next to the station will undergo repaving and relandscaping.
The Illinois Department of Transportation will provide three-quarters of the funds for the project, with Metra and the City of Evanston supplying funds for specific restorations, such as replacing the metal windows with wood ones, said V. Clayton Weaver, director of technical services for Metra.
The Main Street station was built in 1908 as the last in a sequence of four stations including Central, Davis and Dempster. The Dempster Street station since has been torn down, and both the Central and Davis stations already have undergone renovations, leaving only Main Street unrestored. Damage remaining from a 1955 fire to the inside of the building further motivated the renovations, Szostek said.
The Custer Street Fair group leased the building from Union Pacific about five years ago, and has been using the downstairs space to prepare for its events. Soon after moving into the station, Szostek submitted restoration plans to the Illinois Department of Transportation, which were enthusiastically approved, he said.
Szostek has spent four years gathering input from local residents and business leaders to best accommodate the community’s needs.
“The restoration will transform the station into a greatly enhanced commuter station, economic hub and cultural center,” Szostek said in a statement.
Martha Rosenberg, marketing director for EvMark, said the restoration will help show Evanston residents “how transit rich we are.”
“Transit is as much an amenity as the lake,” she said.
By improving the facilities and utilizing them for more of the day, Weaver said he hopes to keep more people in the station and therefore cut down on vandalism, a problem Metra has faced at some of its stations.
