·        October 1910: Northern Pacific Depot opens for passengers, freight and mail. Built by NP Architects Reed & Stem, the $52,000 brick and sandstone building with a footprint of 9800 square feet represents the valley’s historic character, commerce and identity.  

 

·        October 1981:  Amtrak abandons passenger service through Ellensburg; railroad mergers and acquisitions over the years leave the fate of the Depot in the hands of the consolidated Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad.

 

·        August/September 1985: Vandals trash the Depot amidst talk (reported by the Ellensburg Daily Record) of demolishing the structure, leading to a huge public outcry and a unanimous vote by the Ellensburg City Council to use its powers to delay demolition (August 20, 1985 edition of the Daily Record). BNSF subsequently decides to sell the Depot building but keep the land underneath the structure. The decision requires future owners to negotiate and sign a BNSF lease for the ground on which the Depot sits each time the building changes hands.

 

·        August 13, 1991: The Depot is placed on the National Register of Historic Places (OMB No. 1024-0018) by Roger and Linda Hoff, who paid $75,000 for the building.

 

·        December 20, 1991: The Hoffs sell the Depot for $105,000 to David and Karen Bean (who later form a business partnership with Douglas Dicken and Michael Sharon) and a 25 year lease (BNSF Term Lease No. 249,082) is signed. Thereafter, BNSF decides to limit the leases it grants for the ground underneath the Depot to five years, apparently impacting the structure’s commercial resale value. The Depot begins to deteriorate from neglect and its last known lessees (the Kittitas County Action Council, a local nonprofit) vacate the premises in the Summer of 1998 due to roosting pigeons and a lack of heat during cool months. “We about froze to death in the winter and the pigeons caused health concerns,” according to former KCAC employee Mike Williams.

 

·        Winter 1996/97: Freight service is resumed on the BNSF line through Ellensburg.

 

·        June 23-26, 1998:  The Beans’ business relationship with Douglas Dicken and Michael Sharon ends up in a trial by jury (and an ongoing Superior Court case, cited below) with the Beans alleging that Dicken and Sharon are “investors,” “not partners nor joint venturers.” The jury finds that the plaintiffs and defendants are, indeed, partners, and, when the authenticity of Bean’s bookkeeping is brought into question, “[t]he court reserved the accounting for a separate proceeding.” (Douglas A. Dicken and Michael Sharon (plaintiffs) v. David R Bean and Karen L Bean (defendants), Superior Court of Washington for Kittitas County Case No. 962003193.  According to the Country Clerk, the case remains active with no publicly known resolution on the Depot.

 

·        April 1999:  Historic Ellensburg asks Carl Easters of Easters & Kittle ps. (of Issaquah and the architect of the Centralia Depot project) to inspect the Ellensburg Depot property within the context of restoration and adaptive re-use. Easters subsequently finds the structure needs a new roof and weatherization. As a result of his input, HE’s membership, whose collective track record for securing federal and state grant money is excellent, decides to help the City of Ellensburg apply for TEA-21 (Transportation Enhancement Act) funds to buy and weatherize the Depot. The City, which had unsuccessfully applied twice for the funds, began working with Historic Ellensburg to get the grant.

 

·        May 1999-present: Historic Ellensburg begins to monitor the Depot, creating work parties to board up doors and windows (at the nonprofit’s expense) after getting permission from the property owners.

 

·        September 9, 1999: In a letter to the City Engineer John Akers from Easters & Kittle ps., which conducted an initial review of the physical condition of the Depot, Carl Easters wrote: “The structure should and will symbolize and anchor the development of the entire Ellensburg Historical District. It then becomes partially what it once was, a point of arrival for a variety of transportation modes…some portions of the building could be leased to private sector users for professional offices or other commercial uses.” Easters then issued a warning: “The station’s most serious problem is the deterioration of the roof…the sagging eave line seems to indicate the rafters are rotted and must be replaced. In addition, broken dormer windows allow blowing rain to move further into the structure. The problems with pigeons is obvious and a health issue. The City could face loss of the structure if the roof is not made weather-tight within one to two years at the most.” The roof and structure became even more blighted after windstorms in the summer of 2004 tore off large sections of shingles, exposing the aged tarpaper underneath and making the blighted property a danger to public health and welfare, as well as a target for vandalism.

 

·        September 13, 1999: John Akers, City Engineer, receives a letter from Bean confirming his interest in selling the depot to the City of Ellensburg, saying that the price “will be determined following professional appraisal” and a mutually agreed upon price.  

 

·        September 21, 1999: Historic Ellensburg, on behalf of the City of Ellensburg, submits (and is later awarded) a TEA-21 grant proposal for $221,000 with a $39,000 match required for acquisition and weatherization of the Depot. The proposed future use was as a regional intermodal transit center. This would include possible passenger rail service to Seattle, specialty transit services (KCAC, Bowers Field shuttle service, CWU shuttle service), bike trail links between the fairgrounds/John Wayne Trail and Irene Reinhart Park, Greyhound bus service and pedestrian amenities, connecting people to modes of transportation now dispersed, defunct or non-existent. Additional commercial, professional, and public uses are also proposed.

 

·        July 1999: Ellensburg’s Tourism Development Plan recommends focused marketing of the downtown historic district and specifically calls for the renovation of the Depot as a crucial long-term element.

 

·        February 2000: City receives notice of TEA-21 award (see below).

 

·        February 24, 2000:  In the ongoing Superior Court for  Kittitas County Case No. 962003193, Depot co-owners and plaintiffs Dicken and Sharon move for an “appointment of a receiver” to take over the partnership’s properties, seize “control of all bank accounts in the name of the partnership,” “perform an accounting and audit of the partnership properties, including collection of rent by the defendants (the Beans),” “request an appraisal of the property by a qualified appraiser,” and “sell the properties,” including the depot. This is because, as the motion states, “Nearly two years have now passed, and despite repeated requests for an accounting from the Defendants (the Beans), and the Defendants repeated assurances that one would be provided, no accounting has been provided. In fact, no financial or income information has been provided by the Defendants since the trial in June of 1998, and the financial information provided by them at trial was, as the Defendants conceded, materially incorrect, and included numerous overstatements of expenses and understatements of income and revenues.”  (Douglas A. Dicken and Michael Sharon (plaintiffs) v. David R Bean and Karen L Bean (defendants), Superior Court of Washington for Kittitas County Case No. 962003193, Plaintiff’s Motion For Appointment of Receiver, Accounting and Tro, February 24, 2000 and Memorandum Decision, February 10, 1999).

 

·        October 16, 2000: James Vesely, a Seattle Times Columnist, writes that there are alignments of conditions and geography that show some similarities to the Stockton-San Jose commuter experience: “Just as the rise of housing developments across the pass from San Jose to Stockton helps sustain the growth of the Silicon Valley with affordable homes, so would Ellensburg become attractive to people working in North Bend and Issaquah”…and beyond.

 

·        February 2001: The City of Ellensburg is awarded federal Transportation Enhancement Act (TEA) in the amount of $221,000, requiring $39,000 in matching funds to secure the grant. In accepting the grant proposal, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), which administers the federal grant program, finds that the Depot rehabilitation plan is consistent with the Ellensburg Comprehensive Plan, the Ellensburg Transportation Plan (adopted in 1995), the Non-Motorized Transportation System Plan (adopted in November 1997), and the Kittitas County Non-Motorized Transportation System Plan. WSDOT further understands that the restoration of the Depot would promote economic revitalization of a blighted area—a proven strategy as has been shown in Tacoma, Centralia, Prosser, Walla Walla, Seattle and Dayton, all cities that have raised enough public funds to restore or begin the process of restoring their train stations.

 

·        February 2001:  Ellensburg’s city coffers are decimated by Initiative 695 and can’t spare the $39,000 in matching funds to secure the TEA-21 grant. Historic Ellensburg offers to raise the match for the City and does (see below).  

 

·        Summer 2001: Historic Ellensburg raises the $39,000 match for the City, mostly from individual donations of $50 or less, a testimony to the breadth of community support for the organization’s Save Our Station (SOS) initiative. The City agrees to remain partners with Historic Ellensburg in the project long enough to accept the grant, buy the building, and transfer ownership to the nonprofit group to complete restoration of the structure by applying for more grants.

 

·        Fall 2001: Columbia Appraisals of Wenatchee gauges the Depot’s value at $86,000, losing $19,000 in value since its purchase due to its degraded condition.

 

·        March 2002: Historic Ellensburg and the City of Ellensburg successfully negotiate a favorable 20 Year, $20,000 ($1,000 per year) lease agreement with the Burlington Northern Sante Fe railroad for the land on which the station sits, as required under the terms of the TEA-21 grant. The lease is contingent upon the sale of the property to the City and transfer to the nonprofit Historic Ellensburg.

 

·        November  2002:  On behalf of the City of Ellensburg, the Depot is officially appraised in accordance with TEA-21 guidelines by Eastman Company, a “certified” and independent appraiser located in Seattle, at $120,000, a $34,000 increase over the 2002 figure due to the addition of the 20-year lease agreement negotiated by the city and Historic Ellensburg with BNSF. Prior to appraisal, members of Historic Ellensburg work 90 hours to clean and board up the Depot at the nonprofit’s expense in an effort to raise the valuation of the building, make a better offer within the guidelines of the TEA-21 grant, and save the structure from further deterioration.

 

·        January 2003: A formal purchase offer is submitted to David Bean and partners by the City’s federally certified negotiator, Roy Lukins, offering $120,000.

 

·        January 21, 2003: After hearing the new appraisal, Depot owner Dave Bean informs Historic Ellensburg VP Flo Lentz in an email: “…to be honest my best option is to sell the building for salvage.”  

 

·        March 14, 2003: The City’s negotiator, Roy Lukens of Universal Field Systems in Edmonds, receives a letter from attorney Edward Weigelt, in which the latter writes: “My client would be willing to sell the property for $240,000…Please regard this letter as a counteroffer on behalf of the owners,” an amount that is twice the Depot’s appraised value (with BNSF lease) and almost three times the appraised value of the real property (without BNSF lease).

 

·        April 3, 2003: In a letter to Ted Barkley (City Manager) and John Akers (Public Works Director) from Jim Pidduck, the City Attorney, states: “The City’s ability to resort to eminent domain [to force the sale of the Depot] is quite questionable...” and “strictly construed” by state statutes, so the City decides to make a revised and final offer.

 

·        April 25, 2003: The City’s federally certified negotiator offers the Depot owners $132,000, a sum 10% over the appraised value (with BNSF lease) and the maximum purchase price allowed under the grant. This is an increase of $27,000 over the original purchase price of $105,000, when the Depot was in good enough condition to rent, which is no longer the case.

 

·        June 25, 2003: The City’s requested sixty-day response period on the $132,000 Depot offer lapses with no communication from the Depot owners and becomes null and void. At this point, the city and Historic Ellensburg have exhausted all avenues for purchase and rehabilitation under the federal grant guidelines.

 

·        Jun 15, 2004: The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation puts the Depot on its “10 Most Endangered Properties List.”

 

·        November 4, 2004: The Washington Supreme Court declines to hear an appeal of the City of Tacoma v. Ronald and Steffi Zimmerman, 119 Wn. App. 738, clearing the way for cities and towns to use eminent domain to seize blighted historic structures from neglectful owners who refuse to sell or maintain their buildings.

 

·        January  27, 2005: Historic Ellensburg obtains a copy of the briefs prepared for the Tacoma v. Zimmerman case, as well as the ordinance created to condemn the property (which received the unanimous support of the Tacoma City Council), from the Tacoma City Attorney’s office and forwards it to Jim Pidduck (City Attorney), Ted Barkley (City Manager) and John Akers (City Engineer), for action.

 

·        February 7, 2005: Historic Ellensburg asks the City Council to approve an ordinance to acquire the property for the public good, through eminent domain, using the TEA-21 grant to pay the owners a fair market value.

 

Potential Grant Sources for Restoration of the Depot:

 

1. Great American Station Foundation – seed grants and capital grants

 

2. National Trust for Historic Preservation – several different grant programs for project planning, design, and interiors

 

3. Capital Projects for Washington’s Heritage – bricks and mortar restoration funds through WA State Historical Society [local example: Kittitas County Fairground grandstand rehabilitation grant of $500,000]

 

4. Community Development Block Grants – for elimination of slum and blight

 

5. Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation – CLG (Certified Local Government) grants, Corporate Donors – Burlington Northern Foundation, Fred Meyer Foundation, etc.

 

6. Private Donors – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kresge Foundation, 1772 Foundation, etc.

 

7. Grants from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT).

 

8. SAT (“Save America’s Treasures”) grants (sponsored by the White House/Laura Bush and the National Trust).

 

9. Additional TEA (Transportation Enhancement Act) grants.

 

10. AMTRAK funds for active passenger rail stations

 

11. Special Valuation: A Local Tax Incentive Program for Washington State  – allows reduction in assessed valuation of property, in amount equal to rehabilitation expenditures, for period of ten years; available to Ellensburg City Landmarks \

 

12. Federal Investment Tax Credits  – provides up to 20% credit against federal income taxes owed; attractive to potential private sector partners