House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will join three Minnesotans in Congress on Saturday in St. Paul for a tour of the Union Depot, a transportation project that has been awarded $35 million in stimulus funds.
Pelosi is visiting a major St. Paul project that civic leaders hope will be a boon to the struggling downtown area. The San Francisco Democrat is appearing at the potential transit hub with DFL Reps. Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison and Jim Oberstar, who is chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
The now defunct train station would be the end point of a proposed high speed rail line — an initiative the Obama administration has pushed nationwide — linking Chicago to the Twin Cities. Union Depot, scheduled to open in September 2012, would also connect Minneapolis to St. Paul via a light rail project that's in the planning phases.
Union Depot is one of the more high profile projects in Minnesota to receive stimulus funds. Republicans have attacked Democrats for the $787 billion stimulus package that passed last year, and Democrats are fighting to show that the stimulus has helped improve the economy.
Of 35 transportation projects in Minnesota that applied, Union Depot was the only one that was awarded part of $1.5 billion in special transportation funds through the stimulus.
The station was built between 1918 and 1923 on the site of a previous train station that burned in 1915. It's been nearly 40 years since the last train went through the station.
Pelosi last visited Minnesota in June 2009, when she made an appearance at a Rep. Tim Walz fundraiser and a Minneapolis school focused on American Indian empowerment, which was also aided by the stimulus.
