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WINSTON-SALEM -- The last passenger train pulled out of Union Station almost 40 years ago.

But its waiting rooms may soon again be buzzing with travelers and its ticket windows, terrazzo floors and marble walls restored to their former luster.

Under a plan proposed by developer Bill Cannon, the historic depot will be converted into an intermodal transport hub offering rail, bus and streetcar service.

But in many ways, the place never really stopped serving the community's transportation needs. Davis Garage, an auto repair shop, has occupied the building for about three decades, and the whir of air guns fills the space where gilded lettering still marks the restrooms, ticket office and long-gone phone booths.

The historic depot would be only the latest in the Triad to be converted to its original use. In 2003, 24 years after Amtrak last stopped there, Greensboro's Southern Railway station (now the J. Douglas Galyon Depot) reopened as a transportation hub. That same year, High Point's old train station also reopened after having been boarded up for 13 years.

Owner Harvey Davis, who plans to move out next year and sell the station to Cannon, will miss the faded grandeur.

"My father used to travel, was in Baltimore during World War II, and we used to take the train from here. It was a busy, busy place back then," he said. "We've really enjoyed being here, but now it'll be serving the community again. It'll be of benefit to a great number of people."

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Cannon's plan, dubbed Excelsior Street Station, calls for a high-density mixed-use development that would include retail and office space, as well as a hotel and possibly condominiums on an adjacent site. The top floor of the three-level station would serve as a concourse and waiting area for bus and train passengers.

The city of Winston-Salem made a move several years ago toward taking the property by eminent domain but has since adopted a more favorable attitude toward private initiative at the site. The project may end up taking the form of a public-private partnership, with the city shouldering part of the estimated $12.6 million cost to renovate the station.

"We've gotten a federal earmark with local and state matches for about $5.5 million," Winston-Salem assistant city manager Greg Turner said.

"If we have this public-private partnership, then we'd be looking at the support that we have at the different levels of government, plus whatever support the private developer will put into the project.

"And if it is going to be a public-private partnership, we'll probably only use one floor of the building, and a private developer could use the other two floors for his project, and that would allow us to reduce our expense. ... We always like to have a partnership where it's a mutual decision.

"We hate to have to condemn property. Here we've got someone who's interested in working with us, and that's the way we want to go."

The city recently completed an environmental study on the site and is waiting for Cannon to finish his due diligence before making a formal decision on how to proceed. Cannon said he is trying to finalize what the historic and new market tax credits would be but hopes to begin work sometime next year.

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Opened in April 1926, the station served the Norfolk and Western, the Southern and the Winston-Salem Southbound railways. Inside was a newsstand, cigar stand and luncheonette. Waiting rooms were segregated.

During its heyday, about 30 passenger trains a day stopped there.

"A lot of them went to North Wilkesboro and also to Charlotte," said Jeff Miller, historian for the Winston-Salem chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. "The neatest thing they had going was a sleeper that you could get on between 6 and 9 at night. And they would take it over to Greensboro around midnight where they would connect it to a train that was headed to New York. It was one of the few cities that had its own sleeper that came and went to New York."

Miller, who has also written a book on the Winston-Salem Southbound, rode that sleeper many times as a boy.

"I don't want to say it was elite travel, but it was certainly top-notch, like very good first-class commercial air service," the 60-year-old said. "The service was all linen napkins and silverware, and the dining car chefs really prided themselves on their food. The porters would polish your shoes, come by and make the beds for you."

But the construction of U.S. 52 and other major roadways in the area leeched travelers away from the rails in the years after World War II, and by the late 1960s, only service to Asheville remained. In 1970, the depot was closed.

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The station had been vacant for five years when Davis first thought about buying it. By then, vandals had taken their toll, and much of the wiring and many of the windows were gone. Davis, who owned a storage lot nearby, would often drive past it and feel the urge to revisit the departure point of so many boyhood trips.

"I kept seeing it, and then I started waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it," he said. "I had a friend in real estate, and I asked him if he could check and see if it was for sale. He said, 'You don't want that old building.' But I told him to keep checking, and he found out that it was for sale, but they had a contract on the railroad president's desk to demolish it. So, I said, let's have a meeting with him."

He made an offer and bought the place from the three railroads that owned it. Despite the vandalism, the building was structurally sound, but it still took Davis about a year and a half to clean it up and convert it into an auto shop. He moved his business there in 1976.

Davis uses the top floor for the shop and the other two floors, which are below street level, for storage. In the corner of his office, a spiral metal staircase leads up to where the chapel used to be.

Except for a garage-style door at the main entrance, the brick building, with its stone columns and eagle in front, looks much as it did 80 years ago. But inside, tires are stacked up in what used to be the baggage area, ceiling fans hang where chandeliers once loomed, and cars are parked on the grease-stained terrazzo. The old ticket office is now a cashiers area.

"It's a great building, has a lot of open spaces," Davis said. "And it's a great central location for any kind of business that you'd want. It's worked well for our towing service."

He will be moving to a site off South Stratford Road in Winston-Salem once he sells to Cannon.

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The station's proximity to Winston-Salem State University on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive makes it prime for development, Cannon said. During the next several years, the school plans to increase its enrollment from roughly 5,500 to 8,000.

"We see this as having very nice retail, banking, restaurants, lodging, which are sorely needed in this area," he said. "It'll make it easier for them (Winston-Salem State) to compete for professors and students."

Brent McKinney, executive director of the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, said the station would fit nicely into his agency's long-term plans for the area, provided that a hub remains in downtown Winston- Salem. Some residents voiced concern that the reopening of Union Station would mean the closure of downtown's Campbell Transportation Center, but city officials say they plan to keep Campbell open.

"You have the presence right there beside the tracks, right next to the university. It would be a good location for regional buses to have a terminal," he said. "It could also be a major stop for commuter rail service, which could connect to Amtrak."

Miller said Davis has done a good job of keeping the station's original character intact. It stood in as a 1940s-era bus station in the Oscar-winning 2003 short film "Two Soldiers." What the building needs most is a good cleaning.

"It has a lot of potential," he said. "The original floors are still there and can be redone, the chandeliers put back in. With some restoration work, it's not impossible to get it looking like it did when it opened."

The depot, which received historic designation status from Forsyth County in 1997, still attracts rail buffs and, occasionally, former passengers.

"People come, and they'll say they had some of the saddest moments of their life here and some of the happiest moments of their life," Davis said. "When they left for war, and when they came back from war. I hate to leave it, but it's time for it to be raised to its newest level. And I haven't really done much to it other than keep it from being torn down."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com