FUD Wrote:
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> The existence of the Cascadia subduction zone
> wasn't established until the 1960s. The fact that
> it's active and generates occasional large
> earthquakes wasn't confirmed until the late 1980s
> or 1990s. So a station built with unreinforced
> brick in the 1890s will certainly require major
> reconstruction to meet modern building codes and
> keep operating, historic landmark status
> notwithstanding. Essentially, they will have to
> put up a modern internal structure (probably with
> steel) and tie the old brick walls to it (as,
> essentially, a non-load-bearing facade). Plenty of
> that going on in Portland and elsewhere in the
> PacNW for smaller properties, but $250m seems a
> bit light for something on the scale of Portland
> Union.

I'm following a local bond issue to support an earthquake retrofit of a large library built to much higher standards of reinforced concrete in the 1920's that is over 3 times that cost. So that seems to be an interesting estimate for Portland Union Station.

Although in this case, building an internal structure and anchoring the facade might conceivably be cheaper, and the local library measure is in trouble because the high purported costs for the retrofit (and the very hefty property tax increase that folks will have to pay for the bonds used to pay for it...).

Of course, I've also seen cases in my career where it would have been cheaper to tear down a structure and rebuild it as a "replica" structure for earthquakes than to "retrofit" the existing structure. And after years of watching political 'planning", with gold-plating and contractor profit driven design with our taxpayer money, some folks might consider me as somewhat skeptical about these sorts of things.

This quake retrofit, including rebuilding and modernizing the Portland Union Station tracks, for that low "price" seems like a "bargain" compared to things like the growth in costs we've seen for things like the LAUS run-through (we sure don't ever hear much about 28 by 28 for the "Olympics" much in LACMTA's press releases lately, do we????), or US public sector RR electrification costs at 3 times as much per mile, as in other developed nations.