Raleigh Union Station in North Carolina shows that train stations don’t need to be monumental structures to have a major effect on ridership and surrounding real estate.

The Raleigh Amtrak station, which opened in 2018, lacks the historic grandeur of Grand Central Terminal in New York City and doesn’t make a design statement like the soaring steel arches of the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center in California.

What Raleigh Union Station does, according to North Carolina State University architecture professor David Hill, is make the experience of boarding trains easy and enjoyable, all while providing space for public and private events and generating foot traffic for the shops, restaurants and bars in the surrounding area.

“They did a remarkable job integrating all these really important elements,” said Hill, who wasn’t involved in the station’s design.

Raleigh Union Station was designed by Raleigh-based Clearscapes. The lead architect, Steven Schuster, died in 2019. Clearscapes declined to comment for this story.

The architects selected to design Raleigh Union Station were presented with a challenge, said Hill. The 4-acre lot is shaped like a triangle but with two of its sides curved inward.

“The site is quite odd and quirky,” Hill said.

But it offers numerous improvements over the old station, he said.

At 26,000 square feet, it’s 10 times larger than the previous station. It has a wider entrance for dropping off and picking up passengers, helped by a traffic roundabout next to the main entrance. Sidewalks connect the building with the community. The 920-foot-long platform is raised to provide better train access for wheelchairs and strollers.

It also retains some history from the steel fabrication building that previously occupied the site. Its interior walls are clad with metal sheets salvaged from that building.

Raleigh Union Station also provides a much nicer “welcome mat” to travelers arriving in Raleigh, Hill said. As one of the ways to enter Raleigh, it’s important that a good first impression is made, he said.

“It’s the front door for many people coming to Raleigh,” Hill said. “It’s helped with the cultural transformation of that district. It’s just really vibrant.”

The facility helped the Warehouse District sustain development momentum. Kane Realty and FCP developed The Dillon, one of the first mixed-use developments of its kind in Raleigh that sold for $236 million in 2020. And construction began this spring on RUS Bus, a 500,000-square-foot development that will combine a bus terminal with retail, residential and a hotel.

Raleigh’s train station could provide a model to other cities with Amtrak service, said Melisa Gaudreau, a designer at architecture firm Page & Turnbull. Her firm worked on the renovation of the Sacramento Valley Station in California, Amtrak's seventh-busiest station, which has helped generate nearby commercial development.

However, Boudreau warned that the process can be complicated and time-consuming for cities.

“It takes a combination of incremental steps and utilizing buckets of funding when they become available,” Boudreau said.

As Amtrak prepares to spend $66 billion as part of the 2021 federal infrastructure plan to expand service nationwide, replace aging bridges, rebuild tunnels and upgrade tracks, cities are racing to get stations ready for an influx of passengers. New York, Baltimore, Detroit and Buffalo, New York, have all recently opened new Amtrak stations or launched major renovations. Amtrak has also worked with cities to make station improvements, including stations in Westerly, Rhode Island, and Fort Madison, Iowa. Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods declined to comment.

Raleigh decided to build a new station in part because the previous facility at 320 W. Cabarrus St. was built in 1912 and had become obsolete. The site of the Cabarrus station, which was demolished in 2018, is about 1,000 feet south of the new station and across the train tracks.

Another nearby historic Raleigh train station, the 1942 Seaboard Station, has been proposed for demolition to make room for mixed-use developments being proposed separately by Turnbridge Equities and Hoffman & Associates.

More people started taking Amtrak from Raleigh after the station opened, with yearly ridership at Raleigh Union Station up 12% to 172,879 passengers in 2019 from 2018, according to the Rail Passengers Association, a train-travel advocacy group.

Raleigh needed a new station because more people in North Carolina are taking the train, said Chuck McShane, director of market analytics for the Carolinas at CoStar. Raleigh and Charlotte, the state’s largest cities, are each served by 10 Amtrak trains per day, thanks in part to state subsidies.

Riding the train between Raleigh and Charlotte is often just as convenient as driving, McShane said.

Train “travel times are competitive when there’s [highway] traffic,” McShane said. “People who work in both cities do find use for it.”

A one-way trip on Amtrak takes about three hours, compared to two and a half hours by car. However, traffic congestion on interstates 40 and 85 can lengthen the time of a road trip significantly. Amtrak also stops in Greensboro, Durham and five other cities between Charlotte and Raleigh.

Charlotte has proposed replacing its 1962 Amtrak train station with a new facility at 690 W. Trade St. but has not yet secured funding.

It makes sense why Charlotte and other cities are prioritizing their Amtrak stations, McShane said. Buildings located next to transportation hubs could provide one way for employers to get workers back to the office following COVID-19.

“Downtown office markets have struggled a bit throughout the pandemic with the move to more hybrid work,” McShane said. “But I do still think that having alternatives to car-centric modes of transport can help bolster office markets.”

The vacancy rate in the Raleigh office market climbed to 8.6% this month, compared to 8.2% a year ago, according to CoStar research. Average rent per square foot rose 3.7% to $28.19 during the same time.

CoStar photographers capture images every day of distinctive buildings, each with its own story. Snapshots is an occasional feature showcasing one of them.