Joliet Union Station has history but needs a business tenant

The brewery room that currently is a feature of Union Station previously was a storage area with a dirt floor loaded with debris left over from decades of train business.

“That’s where I found the horse wagon,” said Craig Smith, maintenance engineer for the city of Joliet, as he directed attention to one of the many historic elements to be discovered inside and outside the train station built in 1912. “I pulled it out of the dirt floor room. It was covered with junk.”

The horse wagon, formerly used to carry luggage of bygone train passengers, sits in a hallway out of the view of most visitors to Union Station.

Unfortunately, the brewery room, too, is out of view since MyGrain Brewery closed Aug. 19.

The city, which is part-owner and manager of Union Station, hopes to attract another brewpub to use the equipment that MyGrain Brewery installed before it opened in 2017.

MyGrain made improvements beyond the brewery room. Restaurant space that had been occupied by two previous owners sat vacant for years and was “in bad shape” before MyGrain took over, Smith said.

That changed under MyGrain owner Greg Lesiak, Smith said.

“You went through that place, and it was immaculate at all times,” Smith said. “He was very particular.”

That, too, is something the city hopes will pay off as it looks for a new tenant.

“The best scenario would be to find an experienced operator who would be able to purchase the brewery equipment and enter into a lease with the city,” Joliet Economic Development Director Cesar Suarez said.

The city already has begun reaching out to brewpub operators to gauge their interest in opening another location in historic Union Station.

It’s a formula that has been working for the banquet facility on the second floor, which was taken in 2017 by the Mistwood Golf Club. Mistwood, which has a golf course and modern clubhouse with banquet space in Romeoville, operates a second venue at Union Station.

“Union Station has been fantastic for us,” said Dan Bradley, general manager at Mistwood. “We’ve been growing our business every year.”

Brides like the “beauty of the room and the beauty of the building,” Bradley said.

Its historic features are a draw, too.

MyGrain will be missed, Bradley said.

“They were a nice complement to what we did,” he said.

The Grand Ballroom at Union Station and the MyGrain space are the two areas of the building leased for business.

A space that train commuters will remember was used for a coffee shop when Union Station was an operating train station has been leased to a private tenant. It’s now occupied by a city consulting contractor that has overseen the development of the Gateway Center, which replaced Union Station as the city’s working train station, and is working on other city projects.

Another office is used as a police substation. One other office is used by Smith and other maintenance engineers.

Union Station ceased to be a working train station in 2014 as the city moved operations to new train platforms while Gateway Center was being built. The limestone building contains a marble staircase, ticket windows and historical objects that Smith puts out for display – including an old train scale capable of measuring up to 6,000 pounds – that now go unseen by the general public.

But the station still gets visitors, especially train buffs who set up their cameras on the Union Station platform formerly used by train passengers. Smith said he tells them that the city has new platforms on the Gateway Center side of the tracks, but they’re never interested.

“I see those guys a lot,” Smith said, noting that six or seven at a time may be lined up at times outside Union Station. “You see them with their tripods. They don’t like the other side of the tracks.”