Kaine tours historic South Side Depot during info-gathering session in Petersburg

PETERSBURG – City officials said Wednesday that barring any unforeseen circumstances, renovations on the South Side Depot in Old Towne will be complete by next February and the building open to the public by spring.

Temidire Okeowo, Petersburg’s capital improvement projects manager, led Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, and a group of city leaders on a tour of the $2.4 million work under way inside the 1850s-era former train station. Petersburg is converting the property into a multi-use visitors’ center that will serve as the hub of the city’s tourism industry, provide a mini-museum of Petersburg’s 400 years of history, and serve as both a community and cultural center.

Kaine, in town to gather information on an array of Petersburg initiatives, said South Side Depot’s own history can serve as a “wonderful starting point for people coming to the Petersburg area to understand the area and then fanning out” to all the tourist attractions around town. President Abraham Lincoln visited the building during the Civil War, and many of the wooden beams and other architecture that were there when he visited are still standing today.

South Side Depot’s renovations are being paid for with American Rescue Plan Act funds. Petersburg is also requesting at least $1 million in state Industrial Revitalization Funds, as well as a couple of federal grants, to complete renovations to the rest of the building’s west wing.

Petersburg also is working with the National Park Service, which runs the Petersburg National Battlefield attractions around the area, to set up a presence at South Side Depot. Eight years ago, when the renovations first started, NPS estimated that an up-and-running South Side Depot could bring an additional 30,000-40,000 visitors to the city.

The depot is Virginia’s oldest train station still standing. Built in 1854, It withstood the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65 and served the last Confederate-controlled rail line before it was captured by Union troops. The fall of the South Side Railroad all but certified the Confederacy’s defeat that ended the Civil War.

Part of the building was destroyed by the August 1993 tornado that leveled much of Old Towne.

More: Renovations begin to historic South Side Depot

Kaine’s visit was geared to gathering firsthand information about the progress and plans for the South Side Depot so he could advocate for any future federal funding. The former Richmond mayor and Virginia governor said Petersburg’s plan to establish a nucleus for tourism was used as a blueprint by Richmond with its American Civil War Museum at the old Tredegar Iron Works property.

“We had the spokes, but we didn’t have the hub … a battlefield here, a cemetery there, and that’s great,” Kaine said, mentioning the numerous historical sites around Virginia’s capital. “But when we put the Civil War visitors’ center on the [James] river in downtown Richmond at the Tredegar, now 25 years ago, that really organized it and it created a focal people where people who wanted to understand about this most important chapter in the history of this nation could come and get the whole story.”

“We want [the depot] to be the start for everything going to the national battlefield. The first and the last stop,” Mayor Sam Parham said. “Then after people take the tour, they can come back here and spill out into downtown, eat and enjoy what’s down in Old Towne.”

South Side Depot was one of several stops Kaine made during his info-gathering session in Petersburg. He also was given updates on the city’s requests for legislative spending and the pharmaceutical industry cluster in south Petersburg.

One other place he visited was the former site of Southside Regional Medical Center off South Sycamore Street. That is the future home of the Sycamore Grove mixed-use development that will be anchored by the long-awaited downtown area grocery store.

At a meeting earlier this week with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Parham announced that 66% of the residential spaces earmarked for Sycamore Grove already had received initial approval for potential homeowners.

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Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Petersburg gives senator tour of future tourism visitors' center