"We are optimistic about it," said Joan Bagherpour, spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Transportation's rail division.

"I think we have reached an agreement," said Mark Ahrendsen, director of the city's transportation division.

Blue Devil Partners, the third party involved, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. However, plans for relocating Durham's Amtrak depot -- from the present double-wide trailer on Chapel Hill Street into the old Liggett & Myers Walker warehouse across the tracks at Blue Devils Partners' West Village Phase II -- are now off the DOT's back burner.

"We're certainly optimistic," said Bagherpour.

HOW COME? "Financial incentive," said Ahrendsen.

HOW MUCH? Ahrendsen said the city has offered to cover 25 percent of DOT's cost to lease from Blue Devil Partners, paying part in cash and part by letting the DOT use a 0.47-acre vacant lot, left over from downtown urban renewal, for parking.

BACK STORY: Around the time of the 1996 bond referendum, a rail-passenger station was supposed to be part of a "multimodal transportation center" serving Amtrak, buses, taxis and the Triangle Transit Authority's anticipated commuter-rail line between Durham and Raleigh. It was to open within four years, probably in part of the then-abandoned American Tobacco factory.

ASSORTED COMPLICATIONS: City authorities changed minds twice about where to build, settling in 1999 on the Walker warehouse; then private interests bought and planned renovations at both the American and Liggett & Myers plants.

NEVERTHELESS: Cogitation and conversation continued, and by 2006 it looked like Amtrak would go into the Walker and bus and commuter-rail service into a new structure, straddling Chapel Hill Street with a pedestrian bridge.

AND THEN: Money for the commuter-rail project fell through and the TTA took it back to the drawing board. With not so many passengers to be catching trains in Durham, by 2007 NCDOT had figured maybe the Bull City didn't need a new station after all.

"We are looking at other options," Bagherpour said in January.

AND THEN: Blue Devil Partners kept reconstructing, and the city kept pushing for its new station. "We had a one-time opportunity to move into the Walker before it was put to some other use," Ahrendsen said.

ALSO: Durham simply needs more station space. "Right now," Ahrendsen said, "there are times where the double-wide trailer, which was always intended only as an interim facility, is overcrowded." Ticketing, restroom and waiting space is limited, the boarding platform is without a roof and the parking lot is too small.

BY THE NUMBERS: According to Amtrak, 39,035 passengers got on or off a train in Durham in 2006, up from 33,934 in 2005 and from 22,000 a decade earlier.

NOW WHAT? Ahrendsen: "At this point, we have an understanding of the parties. ... We will be bringing more back to the City Council."

Bagherpour: "We're optimistic about working together."

A SIDE NOTE: Public money, channeled through the state and federal governments, has helped renovate old stations in several North Carolina towns, such as Greensboro and Rocky Mount. Passenger-rail service to Durham was discontinued in 1965, and the city demolished its 1905 Union Station to make room for the Downtown Loop.

When rail service resumed in 1990, passengers were accommodated by a plexiglass shelter, dubbed "the Amshack," on Pettigrew Street. In 1996, the city, Durham County and the DOT opened the "interim" station that is still in use.