St. Paul's Union Depot revival offers roadmap for downtown Jacksonville station

Jacksonville's historic downtown railroad terminal, now the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center and part of the University of Florida's proposed Jacksonville campus, once served as the largest passenger station in the South outside Washington, D. C. For decades, the question of whether trains might return has lingered. Now, a case study from Minnesota's capital offers a detailed look at what such a transformation could entail.

St. Paul Union Depot closed to passenger trains on April 30, 1971—the day before Amtrak took over most U. S. intercity rail service. For more than four decades, the 1923 Classical Revival terminal sat without the trains that had once defined it, its spaces repurposed for postal operations and condominiums. Then, after years of advocacy and a $235 million public investment, the station reopened in 2012 as an intermodal transportation hub. Amtrak service returned in May 2014. Today, Union Depot serves intercity and light rail trains, local and intercity buses, shops, and restaurants under one historic roof.

What happened in St. Paul

Construction of St. Paul Union Depot began in 1917 on the site of an earlier station destroyed by fire in 1915. World War I interrupted the work, and the terminal was not completed until 1923. Architect Charles Sumner Frost designed the depot in the Classical Revival style; Frost also designed Chicago's Navy Pier Auditorium.

During its 1920s peak, the station handled more than 282 train movements daily and processed more than 20 million pieces of mail annually, benefiting from its proximity to the St. Paul Central Downtown Post Office. The depot was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 18, 1974.

When Twin Cities passenger operations consolidated at Minneapolis' Great Northern Depot in 1971, Union Depot lost its trains. The U. S. Postal Service took over a portion of the property while other areas remained vacant. The depot's upper floors were later converted into loft condominiums.

In 2005, the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority secured funding to renovate Union Depot as an intermodal hub. The authority purchased the depot for $8. 2 million in 2009. After the Postal Service relocated its operations in 2010, restoration work moved forward, including demolition of a postal building that had blocked track access. The $235 million rehabilitation was completed in 2012. Amtrak intercity service returned in May 2014, more than 43 years after the last passenger train had departed.

The station now connects Amtrak intercity rail, the METRO Green Line light rail system, intercity buses, and local bus service. In 2025, 199,613 Amtrak passengers used the station. The METRO Green Line, an 11-mile light rail line connecting downtown St. Paul with downtown Minneapolis, carried an average of 22,365 weekday passengers in 2025. The historic concourse houses restaurants and retail shops.

Lessons for Jacksonville's downtown station

The parallels between St. Paul and Jacksonville are instructive. Jacksonville's Prime Osborn Convention Center, the former Union Terminal, was built during the same golden age of American passenger rail and similarly lost its trains as travel patterns shifted. The terminal was converted to convention-center use in 1985. It is now slated to become part of the University of Florida's proposed downtown Jacksonville campus.

St. Paul's experience shows that a multi-decade gap in rail service does not preclude a return to transportation use—but it requires sustained public investment, strategic property acquisition, and a broader vision than simply bringing back trains. Union Depot's transformation took years of advocacy and planning, public funding of approximately $235 million, removal of structures that blocked track access, and integration of multiple transit modes.

Projects of this type typically involve layered governmental cooperation. In St. Paul, a county regional railroad authority led the effort, coordinating with Amtrak, the regional transit agency operating the light rail line, intercity bus carriers, and local bus services. In Jacksonville, similar coordination would likely involve JTA (which operates local transit), Amtrak, FDOT (which manages intercity rail planning and some funding streams in Florida), the City of Jacksonville, and potentially private developers.

The question for Jacksonville is not solely whether Amtrak service could return, but whether the station could anchor a broader intermodal hub. Jacksonville is served by Amtrak's Silver Service/Palmetto route, which currently stops at a smaller station on Clifford Lane on the Northside. Relocating that service downtown would require track access agreements with freight railroads, platform and safety infrastructure, and alignment with Amtrak's operational needs.

Impact on downtown activation and development

Union Depot's reopening contributed to the revitalization of St. Paul's Lowertown Historic District, a warehouse and industrial area that has seen new restaurants, residential conversions, and foot traffic tied to the station's role as a regional transit node. The depot now functions as both a transportation facility and a destination, with businesses including bike shops, restaurants, and a gift shop operating within the historic headhouse.

Downtown Jacksonville has pursued similar activation strategies through the Downtown Investment Authority, which has used incentives to spur residential and mixed-use development in areas such as the Rail Yard District and along the Northbank. A restored passenger rail station with multiple transit connections could serve as an anchor for further development, particularly if integrated with JTA's existing Skyway system, which terminates nearby at the Rosa Parks Transit Station.

The Prime Osborn site's future role in the University of Florida's campus plans adds another layer. Academic and research uses can coexist with transportation infrastructure—Union Depot, for example, houses residences in its upper floors—but the question of whether rail service could be accommodated alongside university facilities would hinge on design, track access, and whether stakeholders see value in the investment required.

Intermodal hubs also raise property-value questions in surrounding blocks. Transit-oriented development is a recognized planning goal in Florida's growth-management framework, and proximity to passenger rail and transit service typically commands a premium in urban real-estate markets. The specific effects in downtown Jacksonville would depend on service frequency, connectivity to employment centers, and the mix of uses the station could support.

Funding and political will

Union Depot's $235 million price tag, borne primarily by public sources, underscores the scale of investment required. In Florida, funding for passenger rail projects typically draws on a mix of state appropriations, federal grants such as the Federal Railroad Administration's Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program, local matching funds, and sometimes private partnerships.

Jacksonville's 2020 Downtown Northbank Community Redevelopment Area plan and the DIA's strategic framework have contemplated enhanced transit connectivity, but no funded plan currently exists to restore intercity rail service to the Prime Osborn site. Any move in that direction would require buy-in from the city, JTA, the state, freight railroads that own the tracks, and Amtrak itself.

The politics of large transportation infrastructure projects in Florida often turn on demonstrated ridership potential and regional economic-development arguments. St. Paul benefited from being part of a growing Twin Cities light rail network and a corridor (Chicago to the Twin Cities) where Amtrak ridership has remained relatively strong. Jacksonville's case would rest on projections for Silver Service ridership, the value of a downtown stop versus the current Northside station, and whether regional transit improvements—such as expanded JTA service or future commuter rail—could make an intermodal hub viable.

What happens next

No formal proposal to restore passenger rail service to the Prime Osborn site is currently before Jacksonville's City Council or JTA. The University of Florida's campus planning process, led by UF and the city, will determine how the convention center property is adapted. Those plans, including site designs and proposed uses, will eventually require city approval and will be the venue where questions about preserving rail access or accommodating future transit uses would be addressed.

Residents and stakeholders interested in the future of the site can monitor the UF campus planning process through public meetings and the city's planning department. The DIA, which has authority over downtown development projects, would also be involved in any major redevelopment or transportation project affecting the site.

St. Paul's timeline offers a reality check: the city purchased Union Depot in 2009, completed restoration in 2012, and saw Amtrak return in 2014—a span of five years after acquisition, following decades of advocacy. Jacksonville is in the early stages of reconsidering what the Prime Osborn site could become. Whether that future includes trains will depend on political will, funding, operational feasibility, and whether the city sees value in the kind of long-term, multi-modal vision that brought Union Depot back to life.

The bigger picture

Northeast Florida's growth—rooflines spreading west and south in Duval, filling St. Johns County's school-rated corridors, and marching along Clay's new expressway—has been car-dependent. Master-planned communities, logistics warehouses, and single-family subdivisions shape the region's built environment, connected by widening interstates and arterials.

A restored downtown rail station, integrated with local and regional transit, would represent a different development model: density, walkability, and connectivity concentrated at the urban core. St. Paul's Union Depot shows that such a transformation is possible, but it requires sustained investment and a willingness to think beyond one mode of transportation. For Jacksonville, the question is not just whether trains could return, but whether the city is ready to build the kind of infrastructure that makes a station worth returning to.