Oregon City Station Returns Home
May 11, 2010 - Oregon City, Ore.
After over thirty years and three moves, the Southern Pacific (SP) Depot building returns to the Oregon City train station, where it will serve passengers once more. The depot was constructed in the 1920s as a passenger station and sat about a block south of the current station platform, near 16th Street. In the mid-1970s the depot was moved to North Portland and became a part of the Emerson Hardwood Company, which wanted to raze the building in 1985. Terry Emmert, founder of Emmert International, a company that moves buildings, heard about this and called Dan Fowler, a local developer and former mayor. Fowler purchased the building in 1985, moved it and renovated it to be leased as office space.
Oregon City had not had rail service for some years until, on April 16, 2004, the new Amtrak station opened at 1757 Washington Street. This station consists of a platform and shelter served by the Amtrak Cascades.
In 2008, the Oregon City budgeted $1.5 million to acquire and move the SP depot and upgrade the parking lot. This project was to be paid for through urban renewal funds ($600,000) and federal transportation funds ($900,000) distributed by Metro, which is the regional governmental agency for the Oregon portion of the Portland Metropolitan area. By 2009, the city had bought the SP depot building from Fowler for $230,000 as the first phase of their plan to reinstate the former station as the operating Amtrak station. (As part of that deal, the city also sold the site of the Growco Building, 1743 Washington Street, to Fowler for $170,000.)
The next phase of the depot project will include building the platform for the building and the parking lot, as well as moving the building—which will not be pressed into service as a station immediately. The city hopes to acquire occupants in addition to Amtrak, and intends to maintain and lease office space there.
On April 28, 2010, contractors hoisted the single-story structure onto a flatbed truck and moved it about 1,000 feet down Washington Street to its newest home, sitting on a platform above the floodplain and surrounded by a 50-space parking lot.
