Tampa Union Station gets $6 million restoration — and USF is driving it forward

By Paul Guzzo, University Communications and Marketing

For more than a century, Tampa Union Station has served as the city’s grand gateway for passenger trains.

Now, with an eye toward the next 100 years, the city of Tampa’s Community Redevelopment Agency has committed $4 million to restore the national and local historic landmark — including new windows, updated restrooms, roof repairs and the refurbishment of the red bricks that define the Italian Renaissance Revival building.

The restoration is being shaped by USF from every angle — led by School of Architecture and Community Design alumnus architect Jerel McCants, who developed his love of preservation while a student at the university, and guided by 3D scans produced by USF’s Access 3D Lab.

“The only thing more exciting than restoring our grand old Union Station is having homegrown talent from USF play key roles in the project,” the mayor’s spokesperson Adam Smith  said. “Go Bulls.”

A station with a storied past

Tampa Union Station opened on May 15, 1912, consolidating operations for the Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line and Tampa Northern Railroad into a single hub.

“Throughout the 1950s, however, federal investments in highways and air travel undermined Tampa Union Station’s future,” the facility’s website notes. “Passenger train ridership began to decline heavily during the ’50s — a trend that continued throughout the next two decades.”

Falling ridership and neglected maintenance led to the station’s closure in 1984.

In 1991, a nonprofit named Tampa Union Station Preservation & Redevelopment Inc. purchased the building from railroad holding company CSX for $600,000, raised $4 million to bring it up to code, and ultimately donated it to the city. The station reopened in 1998 and has since been a popular destination for Amtrak’s long-distance service, connecting Tampa south to stops in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami as well as north to cities in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Washington D.C. New York, and most recently, to the Midwest with a final stop in Chicago.

A digital blueprint for the future

For Access 3D Lab director Laura Harrison, scanning Tampa Union Station was on her personal bucket list.

“The other bucket list scans I have completed are the streetcars, streetcar barn and the Egmont Key Lighthouse,” she said. “It’s just a matter of being a resident of Tampa, appreciating the genuine architectural landmarks and wanting to do my part to preserve them.”

In 2021, about a dozen of Harrison’s urban planning students used Tampa Union Station as a hands-on classroom, spending two weeks digitally scanning every inch of the historic building — inside and out.

“Instead of just talking about theory, we teach students the full method of surveying — from understanding the scanner’s mechanics to building a scan plan,” Harrison said. “It was one of the biggest projects we’ve ever undertaken, resulting in a terabyte of raw data. Tampa Union Station is architecturally complex, with its columns and interior details.”

The scans captured the station’s exact as-built condition — including its measurements, structural details, plumbing and electrical systems and even discrepancies between the original blueprints and what stands today. While there was no certainty they’d be used in a future restoration, Harrison remained hopeful.

“We couldn’t be more excited that they are,” she said. “Our digital technology shows a record of exactly what stands in 2025 compared to what was idealized over 110 years ago. It’s invaluable to the restoration effort.”

The architect who came full circle

After earning his master’s degree in architecture from USF in 2001, McCants founded Jerel McCants Architecture in 2010, a firm that specializes in modern design but also known for preserving Tampa Bay’s past.

His firm designed the memorial for Ridgewood Cemetery — a rediscovered unmarked mid-20th century cemetery on King High School’s campus — and he plans to lead the restoration of the nearby Jackson House, a historic Black boarding home.

McCants credits USF Associate Professor Trent Green for instilling in him a respect for preservation. As a student, McCants worked with Green to document the Lawrence B. Brown House, built in 1892 in Bartow by a freed enslaved man.

This was long before 3D scans were possible. So, instead, students meticulously hand-drew the structure, producing records for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Historic American Buildings Survey and the National Register of Historic Places.

“They collect records of historic buildings so that there would always be an architectural record of the structure, should something happen to them or if the building is lost,” Green said. “I’m glad that his encounters with me early in his education inspired him.”

Years later, those drawings were used to help restore the home.

That experience stayed with McCants — so when he was chosen to lead the Tampa Union Station project, he searched for similar records. That’s when he came across the 3D scans produced by Harrison and her students.

“They helped verify that architectural drawings from 113 years ago were still accurate, like the thickness of the walls,” McCants said. “They also gave us more precise measurements and detailed documentation of the structure’s condition — things they didn’t have the tools to capture in 1912, like the curves of the windows.

“The goal is for Tampa Union Station to be restored to retain its historic status and continue to serve passengers for several generations,” McCants said.

What’s next?

Last year, Tampa Union Station welcomed a record 156,000 Amtrak passengers, which is considered impressive since Tampa Union Station is serviced by two trains a day.

After the current renovation project is completed, the city will look into adding a coffee shop, co-working space and an event venue for weddings, parties and galas. The vision is for the station to become a community destination with multiple forms of revenue. This will allow for long-term sustainability of the station.

With such use, McCants foresees requiring the scans to be referenced again in the future.

“Buildings like Tampa Union Station need constant maintenance,” he said. “Having such detailed records is always helpful.”

Harrison, meanwhile, still has more buildings on her preservation bucket list.

“It’s more of a running list,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sure I’ll keep adding to it — Tampa `Theatre, the Sulphur Springs Water Tower — all iconic.”

And Green is proud to see his former student leading the restoration and his university helping make it possible.

“We all have an obligation to do our part in preserving our historic cultural resources,” he said. “USF understands and teaches that.”