MI: Saginaw’s Potter Street Station: A 144-year journey of preservation

While Potter Street Station’s next chapter remains unclear, one of the historic Saginaw site’s caretakers is confident the old train depot will find new life."

Opened in 1881, Potter Street Station last served as a train stop a century later. Then, as the ex-depot spent years barely evading a wrecking ball, a nonprofit formed to take ownership of the northside facility and repair its deteriorating structure.

That was 1990. Thirty-five years later, the struggle both to keep the 11,500-square-foot building upright and to find its new purpose remains an ongoing project.

And it’s a project with forward momentum, despite recent setbacks, said Glenn Steffens, the new president of the Potter Street Station-owning nonprofit known as the Saginaw Depot Preservation Society.

“I would say, to those who have optimism about Potter Street Station, don’t give up on it,” Steffens said. “The optimism is warranted.”

There was a jolt of optimism for Potter Street Station’s revival as recently as 2023. That was when leaders with the city-based transit system — Saginaw Transit Authority and Regional Services (STARS) — announced plans to seek $100 million to move its headquarters into the 144-year-old former train station, about a half-mile north of the current STARS facility.

While the move was far from a certainty, the transit agency spent thousands of dollars and years simply exploring the possibility. Having secured multimillion-dollar grants for other transit projects, STARS officials hoped eventually to score funding for the Potter Street Station plan.

While STARS leaders have not reversed their decision to pursue the old depot as a new hub, the transit agency’s fortunes have changed since 2023, putting those Potter Street Station plans at least temporarily on hold.

State funding has decreased, with a 15% reduction in Michigan funding hitting STARS’s books this year. Dan Kildee, the U.S. Congressman who championed many STARS funding projects at the federal level, retired from politics. And the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) began a review of the STARS budget after the transit agency’s officials announced they discovered staff spent federal funds on expenditures meant to be covered by general fund budget dollars.

That funding misstep led the STARS Board of Directors in October to cast a no-confidence vote in the agency’s executive director, who then resigned. He was one of the chief advocates for STARS moving into Potter Street Station.

But here’s a twist: That resigned STARS executive director was Steffens.

Two months later, he was introduced as the new leader of the Saginaw Depot Preservation Corp.

Now engaging the Potter Street Station revival project in a new role, Steffens said the old depot may still one day house STARS operations. There, STARS officials envisioned transforming the ex-train station into a 21st-century bus transit terminal, building supporting infrastructure in the neighborhood, and perhaps paving the way for trains to stop again at the station that once brought some of the region’s earliest American settlers to Saginaw.

“Logistically, for this community, I still think a transit station is the best use of this property,” Steffens said. “It backs up to rail tracks, and hopefully, the country invests more in transportation. And part of transportation includes upgrading to high-speed rail, or at least upgrading to passenger rail from freight rail, which (the Potter Street Station rail) is.”

With STARS now navigating multiple financial obstacles, though, Steffens said Potter Street Station advocates must work to keep the old depot’s options open.

“In my dream world, you’ve got Potter Street Station being taken over for the community as a transit station,” he said. “But we also don’t want to turn anyone away that might have a really good idea we haven’t thought of yet. We’re not going to lock those out.”

Steffens said, to keep those options open, the Saginaw Depot Preservation Corp. will continue rehabilitating the aging facility.

He said the group last year made significant strides in repairing a leaky roof, which officials once estimated could cost contractors $100,000 to fix. Steffens said Saginaw preservationist Alex Mixter and a group of volunteers instead went to work on it, spending about $3,000 in donations to patch up the structure.

The group plans to add roof shingles to the facility later this year, Steffens said.

That effort also reinforced to Steffens the commitment the Saginaw community continues to demonstrate in saving the old depot from razing. For nearly 40 years now, preservationists, volunteers and donors have worked to find a new purpose for Potter Street Station, even as cynics have predicted its demise.

“There’s a lot of hands involved in this, and a lot of people feel vested, both inside the ( Saginaw Depot Preservation Corp.) and out,” Steffens said. “There’s optimism.”

If the plan to move STARS into Potter Street Station falls short, the transit agency’s pursuit still may have provided important momentum important to the old depot’s revival, Steffens said.

The transit agency’s years-long effort that led its board to choose Potter Street Station as a proposed headquarters showed the community the potential of the old depot, Steffens said.

That years-long effort also removed some worries that threatened a potential rebuild. A $411,500 STARS feasibility study led engineers to determine the building’s structural integrity was in better shape than they feared, Steffens said. That’s the kind of finding other organizations may value when considering a move into the old depot.

Saginaw Depot Preservation Corp. members' efforts to repurpose Potter Street Station involves more than rehabilitating the facility itself.

The station is surrounded by a largely vacant neighborhood, which housed General Motors employees before the automotive industry’s regional downturn in the latter 20th century. Before Saginaw officials updated the city’s master plan document in 2022, the station’s surrounding neighborhood for years was labeled the “Green Zone” by Saginaw city planners. They eyed demolishing the area’s structures to instead allow scenic green spaces to grow there.

But Steffens said Potter Street Station’s future depends on people returning to the northside, either as residents or patrons of new development built near the old depot.

“Whatever we do to ( Potter Street Station), it can’t exist in a vacuum, and that area right now is a vacuum,” Steffens said.

“So, we need a holistic and comprehensive approach to redeveloping that northeast neighborhood. Let’s say the first floor of Potter Street was turned into a restaurant or a bar: Is anyone going to go down there, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, with overgrown weeds and deer running around, to eat at a restaurant? Frankly, I probably wouldn’t.”

Steffens said he remains optimistic other developments could one day grow in — or near — the neighborhood. He said a Saginaw County-operated affordable housing program funded by $1 million in federal dollars and a projected expansion of a nearby medical corridor both could provide a level of human traffic in the neighborhood needed to revive Potter Street Station, whatever form it takes next.

“We need to get out of the mentality of planning in silos, where we have different actors planning in their own back corner,” Steffens said. “We can work together toward a greater vision using all these assets, whether it be land or a deteriorating station that this group has been keeping together for decades.”

History of Potter Street Station

1857: A railroad company forms in Saginaw to build a line from Pere Marquette — now Ludington — to Flint.

1859: The first rail of the Flint line starts near Washington and Potter.

1862: Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad opens its first section of track from Saginaw to Mount Morris. The first trip is Jan. 20, and 100 passengers take the ride.

1881: Potter Street Station is built. Passenger service peaks from the 1800s well into the 1900s. Its terminal was a destination for Irish immigrants drawn to the region during the lumber boom of the late 19th century, for Asians seeking salt mine jobs about that same time, and for Black Southerners who sought a claim in General Motors’ expansion in the first half of the 1900s. However, the birth of the automobile and improved highways signal the eventual decline of passenger rail over the course of the 20th century.

1950: Passenger service from the Potter Street Station ceases.

1955: Chesapeake & Ohio Railways, owners of the Potter Street Station, suggests tearing down the depot to make way for a warehouse-office building.

1961: The Potter News Depot, a newsstand and notions store that remained open in the station, closes after 50 years.

1964: New York Central Railroad Beeliner is the last passenger train from Saginaw’s New York Central depot, on West Genesee near Michigan. The Beelinger’s daily run was from Detroit to Saginaw to Bay City and back.

1986: Potter Street Station closes.

1988: City officials order CSX Transportation, formerly Chesapeake and Ohio Railways, to demolish the station by September 1988. Area railroad and history enthusiasts develop rescue plans.

1990: The Saginaw Depot Preservation Corp. buys the station from CSX Transportation for $10,000. The group remains the building’s owner today.

1991: Saginaw City Council members propose demolition of the depot under the city’s dangerous buildings ordinance.

A fire severely damages the station April 16-17.

The station preservation group files suit in Saginaw County Circuit Court to block a city order to tear down the station.

Saginaw County Circuit Judge Leopold P. Borrello rules the city cannot tear down the station.

1992: Borrello orders preservationists to put up a $41,250 bond to protect the city from liability in case anyone gets hurt at the station.

City Council members delay demolition so the depot group can apply for a state grant.

The Michigan Historic Preservation Review Board nominates the Potter Street Station for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

1993: Preservationists receive a $181,600 state grant to renovate the depot and approval for a $45,400 loan from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

1994: The depot group rejects bids for station repairs because the figures are too high.

1995: The Mid-Michigan Minority Contractors Association begins repairing a 60-foot chimney.

1996: The National Park Service adds the station to the National Register of Historic Places days before Christmas.

1997: A 25-foot tower tumbles into the depot, punching a hole in the recently repaired roof.

2007: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approves a $1 million grant for the station’s revitalization. That figure drops to $656,000 over the years.

2021: U.S. House Rep. Dan Kildee in a federal transportation and infrastructure bill proposes a $200,000 feasibility study to explore Potter Street Station as a potential hub for Saginaw Transit Authority and Regional Services (STARS), a Saginaw-based bus transit system. While legislators later remove the study from the final bill, Kildee’s proposal sparks renewed hope in the repurposing of Potter Street Station.

2022: Potter Street Station received a status belonging to properties covered by the Michigan Local Historic Districts Act of 1970.

2023: After considering two other relocation options in Saginaw, STARS leaders vote unanimously to pursue moving the transit agency to Potter Street Station. The move, though, remains dependent on the agency raising $100 million to repair the Victorian-era structure and adding transit-friendly infrastructure in the surrounding neighborhood.

Today: After a series of budget challenges and turnovers in leadership, STARS officials say the agency has not abandoned plans to move into Potter Street Station, but admit the momentum for the relocation has slowed.

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