Hotel site. When the riverfront bustled with sawmills and steamboat landings, in the 1880s, the city allowed an old railroad to build a yard of five-abreast tacks on city land. Fast-forward: The saw mills are ancient history. Only a single track remains in use. It gives the Union Pacific access to Bay State Milling and dozens of industrial customers all the way to the Far East End. The city wants to reclaim four sidetracks, now abandoned, for an upscale riverfront hotel fronting on Levee Park. Image: Steve Lunde
At issue: Old tracks from Johnson to Walnut streets
WINONA, Minn. – The City Council voted unanimously to proceed to take out an abandoned railyard along the Levee to make room for a proposed riverside hotel. For decades everybody had assumed the old yard, now weed-infested, hadbelonged to the Union Pacific Railroad — and railroads are notorious for never ever giving up real estate. Recently it was discovered that a forgotten 1886 city ordinance had granted only an easement for the rail yard. In short, UP doesn’t own the land. By amending the 1886 ordinance, the city could revoke UP’s claim to the land. It’s a four-block section from Johnson Street, behind Winona 7 movie house, to Walnut Street. The Council’s next agenda will have the reclaim-the-easement on its agenda for final consideration.
Earlier: A hotel on the Winona Levee? Still yakking
Earlier: Port to would-be hoteliers: Stop dallying
Levee Park.Across the top, showing as dark, is the Mississippi River. Alongside is the city’s signature Levee Park alongside. Lower is the single-track Union Pacific industrial spur. Below that, obscured by weedy overgrowth, are the four abandoned tracks that the city seeks to remove for upscale hotel The hotel would occupy the entire parking lot behind the Winona 7 movie house and the abandoned rail yard, while leaving the UP’s active single-track spur in place to deliver and pick up freight at industrial customers downriver. These are moving switching operations on weekdays, usually in the morning.
Good ‘ol days: More trans-con Winona rail traffic due
Levee access
For several years the public already has had pedestrian access across the tracks to Levee Park at the foot of Main Street. Otherwise, a safety railing separates the Levee from downtown.