OGDEN — Union Station is the historical centerpiece of Ogden City.

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski noted that the city is embarking on efforts to make sure it remains that way well into the future.

“This property and this project has been in discussion for years,” he said. “It is, hands down, the most important historical asset we have in the city. It’s like the center point of where everything began, and it was all based around transportation. Today, if you look at Union Station, transit runs past it, stops near it but doesn’t focus there, and we’re trying to change that.”

And like so many big projects, there are a number of realities that come along with it.

“Those are really big moves that require a lot of partners, a lot of funding and a lot of long-term planning,” he said. “A lot of what we’re talking about is not an overnight effort and it’s going to require a long-term sustained vision and sequential steps, many of which run parallel to each other and the order of the steps that we take is really important as well.”

By far, the biggest effort is the ongoing Union Station Neighborhood Concept, which conceptualizes future development around the campus of Union Station.

Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, or CAO, Taylor Nielsen said that after more than a year of gathering input on potential concepts, Concept C emerged as the public’s preferred choice.

We have to now take this and start turning this in, platting streets, coming up with where the building areas are going to live,” he said. “Are all of our partners onboard as we’re putting these things down? Our developer, UTA — is everyone comfortable with some of the decisions we’ve made for what this framework looks like? Then you move into trying to finalize some of that scope?”

He said the hope is to move into the next stages of planning in January.

According to the Union Station Neighborhood Concept website, “Concept C shows Union Station as the center of a cultural hub that includes museums, an expanded train hall, outdoor plaza, as well as a butterfly canopy for UTA FrontRunner on the west face of Union Station. A boutique hotel and residential buildings are planned to the north.”

Nielsen said the next steps will include gathering feedback on aesthetics of buildings and their locations.

“The master planning phase has some interesting components that go along with it,” he said. “There’s another public process that we have to go through. If we’re adopting standards as part of this development, we have to go through council for approval, we have to check with landmarks, we have to get through Planning Commission to make sure all of those agencies are onboard with us moving forward. Then we still have the public input period describing the master plan again.”

He said the next community meeting on the Union Station Neighborhood will likely be in January.

For more information on the Union Station Neighborhood, visit https://www.unionstation-ogden.com/concept.