By PETER RUGG
Last week’s story on Union Station’s troubled finances resulted in a lot of phone calls. Most of you called after I left the office but were kind enough to leave detailed messages -- all passionate about the building’s future, all sure you had a plan that would save it. Here are some of the more detailed quotes. Almost all of your plans involved courting the metro’s wealthy and elite, and there were four votes for a casino in some form or another.
• “The only way to save the place is to bring in the wealthy people who go to the Plaza now. There should be a monthly roaring 20s black tie jazz event. You’d have to dress up to get in, and you charge for tickets and food and everything. And you have limo service. You have to cater to the city’s wealthy to get them in there, and make it an important social event. Then you’ll raise enough to keep it open and get people interested again.”
• “They’ve got some pretty good restaurants but I think they need to do better if they really want to get me to come. I think they should have a big, sort of a food court set-up, where everything’s gourmet and you have special dishes from all over the world and gourmet chefs. Maybe then people would stop in.”
• “You have to put a casino in there. No one will care otherwise. The building’s perfect for a casino, you put in some rows of slot machines and a lot of table games. Then you’ve got enough of a crowd for the restaurants. And you put a good bar in. I think it would also help if the casino hosted some poker tournaments and brought some of the big players in and got some attention on some of those poker shows on TV.”
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