[Update, Friday 10:46am: Freighthouse Square owner Brian Borgelt has responded to recent coverage here and elsewhere with a scathing email that a source shared with STB, reading in part, “the legion of dingbats has attacked en masse, as they always do.” Read the full email here.]

[Update, Thursday 12:03pm: Though the News Tribune didn’t disclose the financial terms under dispute, a source speaking on condition of anonymity disclosed to STB that the assessed value of WSDOT’s portion of Freighthouse Square is $300,000, that WSDOT has offered Borgelt $1.5m, and that Borgelt is demanding $6.1m]

The Tacoma News Tribune broke the news Wednesday night that planned Amtrak service at Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square (FHS) may be in jeopardy. Negotiations with current FHS owner Brian Borgelt have gone badly enough that WSDOT has initiated eminent domain processes and is now publicly looking for alternative locations for Amtrak as a fallback plan.

WSDOT’s Janet Matkin wrote to a Tacoma advisory committee to relay the news. From the News Tribune:

“Negotiations to purchase the identified portion of the building are at an impasse and any further delays that impact the construction process will make it impossible for WSDOT to meet deadlines for building the new station,” Janet Matkin, WSDOT’s rail division communications manager, wrote to advisory committee members. A new station is necessary because the department beginning in mid-2017 will reroute Amtrak passenger trains from their present waterfront route to a route through South Tacoma, Lakewood and DuPont. The new route will relieve congestion on the tracks along Puget Sound and cut several minutes off Amtrak’s Seattle-Portland schedule. “Funding for the new station is through a federal grant and the Federal Railroad Administration determined that under this grant, negotiations to acquire the building could not begin until October 2015. The grant also stipulates that all construction for the station must be completed by summer 2017. No alternative funds have been identified to extend the construction beyond this deadline,” the department wrote.