Tacoma’s former Amtrak station trashed, burned, covered in graffiti. Who’s responsible?

One of Tacoma’s former train depots is a beloved city icon while the other is an eyesore on the city’s horizon.

Less than a mile from the Beaux-Arts glory of Union Station is the squat, boarded up former Amtrak station at 1001 Puyallup Ave. It’s covered with graffiti, surrounded by trash and bears the scars of recent fires.

For nearly four decades, the building served as Tacoma’s Amtrak station. Since its closure in November 2021, it’s become a microcosm of the city’s woes.

While the Puyallup Avenue station was never as glamorous as Union Station or as sleek as Tacoma’s current train station at Freighthouse Square, it still served as the site of joyous reunions and teary goodbyes since June 1984 when passenger service was transferred there. Train travelers could catch the Coast Starlight as it traveled from Seattle to Los Angeles or one of several Cascades regional trains that run between Eugene, Oregon and Vancouver, B.C.

Today, piles of trash are pushed up against the abandoned station’s walls. Weeds choke once-landscaped medians. Ceilings bear the blackened scars of fires.

After The News Tribune raised questions about the building’s safety with the city of Tacoma, a code inspector was sent to the site Sept. 6. The inspector confirmed graffiti violations and nuisance violations for overgrowth, garbage and debris, according to city spokesperson Maria Lee.

Neither the Tacoma Police Department nor the Tacoma Fire Department would voluntarily divulge how many calls for service the publicly funded agencies have made to the address in recent times. The News Tribune will file formal public records requests to get that information.

Whose responsibility is it?

It’s not Amtrak that’s getting the violations from the city. Instead, building owner and railroad operator BNSF Railway will be the recipient.

“(The inspector) is contacting BNSF to obtain a plan of repair and will also mail BNSF the notices of violation,” Lee said in a statement to The News Tribune.

BNSF spokesperson Kendall Sloan told The News Tribune via e-mail Tuesday that BNSF is “in the process of selling the building” but did not address plans to secure the building from further damage.

Last week, a line of freight cars was idling near the building. They, too, were covered in graffiti.

Bypassed into history

With the property poised for sale, the fate of the building remains uncertain. It could be an ignoble end in a city where history is inextricably linked to rail.

The Puyallup Avenue station served as the city’s sole train station until 2000 when Sounder commuter rail arrived in Tacoma at Freighthouse Square. The Puyallup Avenue station continued to serve Amtrak’s Coast Starlight and Cascades trains.

The station was slated to close on Dec. 18, 2017. That’s when a new Point Defiance Bypass route was set to open that would take all of Tacoma’s train traffic onto the Sounder route to Lakewood and then along Interstate 5 to the Nisqually area before rejoining the main line. The new route came with a brand new station built into Freighthouse Square.

But the inaugural trip ended in tragedy when the first passenger-carrying train derailed while crossing I-5, killing three passengers and injuring another 65.

Service at the Puyallup Avenue station resumed that same day and continued until November 2021 when the Point Defiance Bypass was successfully and permanently put into operation and passengers began boarding and disembarking at Freighthouse Square.

The new route helped cut eight minutes from the timetable and relieve congestion on the Point Defiance route which is constricted by the single-track Nelson Bennett Tunnel. The route is now used exclusively by freight trains.