NC: With no restaurant feasible at Union Station, city clears way for alcohol, food trucks

In less than a minute and with no discussion, the Winston-Salem City Council voted unanimously on Monday to allow alcohol to be sold during events at Union Station.

The vote came with the standard CYA legal conditions, of course. The city’s not going to eat that liability.

In and of itself, giving a verbal OK to what’s technically an amendment to an existing ordinance isn’t surprising.

Third parties who sign contracts to use a dozen other city-owned facilities, including Bowman Gray Stadium, the golf courses and the courtyard in Piedmont Triad Research Park, are allowed to pour drinks into approved containers. Adding one more is nothing-to-see-here territory, except for one thing.

It’s Union Station, the historic train stop on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that’s given city officials a series of migraines following a contentious, expensive fight to take it over.

The last passenger train, if you’ve lost track, pulled out of Union Station in 1970 after a stop on a route from Greensboro to Asheville.

Despite its historic status, Union Station fell into disrepair after being abandoned. Davis Garage, an auto-repair/towing company in business since 1939, bought it for $55,000 in 1975 and opened up shop.

It remained that way until 2004, when the city, flush with a $1.3 million federal grant, began sniffing around in hopes of someday restoring passenger rail service.

Negotiations, such as they were, dragged on for years. The city’s final offer topped out at $681,900. The owner at the time, Harvey Davis, wanted twice that.

The result was a nasty fight that ended with the city seizing the title through eminent domain and a purchase price of $1.35 million, which was pretty much what Davis had asked in the first place.

The city spent years and millions, a total upward of $19 million in all, on the site. A transformed Union Station reopened in 2019.

To the chagrin of supporters, vague visions of sit-down restaurants and coffee shops never quite materialized. Union Station sat mostly underused save for city transportation offices and the occasional public — and dry — gathering.

And that’s never sat well with council member Annette Scippio of the East Ward. She made her displeasure known in November when, five years after an apparent deal to land a restaurant as an anchor commercial didn’t come off, an expert told city officials a hard truth about Union Station: It was too old to upfit for a modern kitchen suitable for anything larger than a snack bar.

“The amount of destructive work necessary to achieve the goal (of adding a full-functioning kitchen) would be extensive and would likely damage or ruin many parts of this historic landmark,” Winston-Salem architect Kevin Owen wrote in a report shared with the city council in the fall.

That hit Scippio hard, understandably so, considering her vocal support in making sure her East Ward got a fair shake.

“I just get disappointed,” she said at the time with carefully measured words. “Because it seems like we’re able to do things in other parts of this city, regardless of the money, and then we can’t get it done in the East Ward.”

A few days after Monday’s vote, a win that some might describe as pyrrhic since it allowed only for third parties who rent out the space to hire caterers and bartenders for special occasions - think fundraisers or corporate bonus dinners - Scippio’s thinking has evolved.

“I know we wanted something more permanent there,” she said. “But the issue is that it’s a historic building, and a typical commercial kitchen is more expensive and would require changes that wouldn’t maintain historic aspects of Union Station.”

Hard-liners might see that as a flip-flop, but there’s another way to look at it: An elected official whose viewpoint changed upon being presented with evidence.

Weird. But it used to be the norm.

After attending a Valentine’s Day function in the building and seeing the possibilities — think caterers or food trucks — she embraced the possibilities rather than push for something out of reach.

“It’s just a different way of looking at how we do things,” she said. “We can accomplish more and get more use out of it. The standard way isn’t always the best way.”

Compromise, I believe old-school politicians call that. A lost art.

And when we see it, it should be toasted — with or without booze served up by an amended Chapter 38 of the City Code.

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