Amtrak Cascades Station
at Freighthouse Square
Tacoma, WA
As a continuation of VIA’s long engagement with the City of Tacoma planning and downtown visioning (South Downtown Planned Action EIS, Downtown Tacoma Comprehensive Plan), VIA provided lead architectural services for the AMTRAK Cascades Station (TACS) as part of WSDOT’s Point Defiance Point Bypass project. This new station is the centerpiece of Tacoma’s downtown multimodal hub that includes Sounder, Tacoma Link, ST Express bus, and Amtrak facilities. On a team led by WSP/PB, VIA led architectural design (60% – Final Design) for the project.
The project won the 2017 ACEC Washington Silver Award in the Complexity category.
TACS won the Regional Excellence Award at the 2019 WoodWorks Wood Design Awards. Juror comments included, “What struck me about the Tacoma Amtrak Station was the sheer elegance. This is not just an important piece of wood architecture, it’s an iconic piece of civic architecture that’s highly resolved as a piece of design.”
