JOPLIN, Mo. — The last developer to make a run at renovating Joplin’s historic Union Depot says she wishes the city success with its current proposal.

Nancy Allman’s attempt in the late 1980s collapsed in a welter of red ink and a snarl of lawsuits.

City Manager Mark Rohr has proposed renovating the 1911 depot for use as a new home of the Joplin Museum Complex. The museum boards have not committed to the idea, which to date has no set funding proposal.

An architect, Chad Greer, of Webb City, has been retained to come up with a cost estimate on restoration. He has brought in a museum specialist, Mary Frances Turner of Synergy Design Group in Tallahassee, Fla., to assess the needs of the museum and report on whether a depot rehabilitation would solve those needs. Her report is to be available within a few weeks.

A series of owners and developers tried from the early 1970s through the late 1980s to set up financing plans to attempt renovation or restoration of the depot, but none succeeded. The depot closed in 1969 and for years sat as it was left, with most of its furnishings intact. Over time, though, vandalism took a toll on the interior, and developers peeled what they could from the inside.

It has been more than 20 years since Nancy Allman, of Wentworth, made her attempt.

She acknowledges that she may have some things from the building, but she says she does not think she should publicly discuss anything about the depot or her former interest in it.

Hope for success

“I’m very hopeful for the city and hope everything goes forward” with Rohr’s plan, Allman said recently by telephone.

Greer asked the public in July for the loan of any photographs that might show the interior of the building or any mementos that would help him document the building’s past as a stop for four railroads. The four included Kansas City Southern Railway Co., which operated the Southern Belle passenger train.

Greer last week said his request had not produced much.

The Joplin Museum Complex asked voters in April to approve a sales tax of one-sixth of a cent to support its operations and to remodel Memorial Hall as a home for the museum. Voters turned it down, with many suggesting Union Depot as the appropriate site for the museum.

The museum needs more room and climate control suitable for maintaining papers, photographs and collections, representatives said. Many of the museum’s collections are not displayed because space and conditions at the current building in Schifferdecker Park do not permit it, they said.

Allen Shirley, president of the board of the Friends of the Museum, which owns many of the museum’s collections, said several questions must be answered before the board — and the board that governs the museum’s mineral wing, which belongs to the city of Joplin — could consider the depot.

“We’ve always been for historic preservation,” Shirley said. “We have very good hopes that something can be done to preserve the depot.”

Key issues

Shirley said there are three key issues for the museum boards. “We need an answer to the actual structural integrity of the building,” he said. “What we’d like to see is an update evaluation on the building’s current condition.

“Secondly, our concern is: How does the space issue work? Our current measurement of the building itself shows that it’s about 400 square feet smaller than the existing museum. Our desire is to have about twice as much space.

“Third, we simply need assurance if the exhibits will be maintained, protected from environmental issues, direct sunlight, moisture, mildew and these types of situations,” especially since the basement of the building has had standing water in it for years.

“It’s not that we’re against the idea,” he said.

Greer’s work and that of Turner may answer some, if not all, of those questions. In a meeting with Turner in early August, it was suggested that additions could be made to the depot building to give the museum the desired space.

Previous proposal

It’s not the first time the depot building has been proposed as a museum site.

Members of the Joplin 1973 Centennial Association, which planned a celebration in 1973 observing Joplin’s 100th birthday, proposed renovation of the depot for use by the museum as a centennial project.

At that time, Kansas City Southern offered to deed the depot to the city.

Globe files show that the City Council declined the suggestion in part because the curator of the museum’s mineral collection, Everett Ritchie, opposed the depot site. Ritchie said then that the proximity of active rail lines posed a danger of explosion or fire that could damage or destroy the museum’s collections if they were in the depot. He cited two other cities in the United States where that had happened.

In the Allman renovation effort, she obtained a $175,000 mortgage on the building from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources as part of its historic preservation program. After her project collapsed, the department foreclosed on the property and still holds title to it.

One of the subcontractors who worked on the project then, Craig McKinney of MCM Restoration in Fort Scott, Kan., said much of the building’s interior was gutted before he worked there in the late 1980s.

He said that although his company lost money because he was never paid in full for his work to recoat the building’s concrete exterior, the ill-fated Allman project may have saved the depot from ruin.

“The deterioration would have accelerated if we had not done the work to the building,” McKinney said. “We patched and repaired most of the exterior concrete and put a protective masonry coating on the exterior of the building.”

When he started the work, the exterior was crumbling.

“At least now the structure is still there and has some structural significance,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll be able to get something going on it. That’s what it’s always needed is a use.”



Building’s significance

The concrete construction of Joplin’s Union Depot and its style, with tall, curved windows and angled features, were innovative at the time it was built and helped establish a national reputation for architect Louis Curtiss of Kansas City. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.