New Penn Station

[New Jack City]

Latest on the new Penn station...

NY POST

A MIGHTIER PENN

By CLEMENTE LISI

November 22, 2004 -- Welcome to the new Penn Station.

The transformation of the Farley Post Office into a modern transit hub is back on track with construction expected to start next summer in an effort to extend and enlarge Penn Station by 2009, officials said.

The rail complex will be renamed the Moynihan Station in honor of late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and will primarily house Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit trains.

The project got a shot in the arm last week when the Port Authority approved $10 million in funds for the state to use toward the construction of an extension between platforms located at Penn Station's West End concourse to the new hub.

The $900 million project was launched in 1999, but several financial and logistical problems stalled the plan, including Amtrak's backing out of helping pay for the station, the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax postal crisis.

Most of the funding earmarked for the construction of the new complex has been in place since 2001.

Moynihan Station, which would relieve crowding and make it easier for commuters to board trains, will feature a mix of modern architecture and classic beaux-arts design.

Plans show the new station will feature a sky-lit concourse area, spacious ticket hall, underground connection to the current station and an estimated 800,000 square feet of potential retail space.

The face-lift would mean redesigning the building — which stretches from 31st and 33rd streets along Eighth and Ninth avenues — to look more like the original Penn Station that was torn down in 1966.

Over 500,000 daily riders currently stream through Penn Station and are forced to make their way through crowded and dimly lit tunnels underneath Madison Square Garden to get to trains.

The Empire State Development Corp., the state agency spearheading the project, said developers Boston Properties, Jones Lang LaSalle together with Tishman Speyer, The Related Companies, and Vornado Realty Trust have bid on the project.

"Each firm has put forth initial ideas for development of the space and the project, and now we will give them an opportunity to develop their proposals more fully," said ESDC Chairman Charles Gargano.

The ESDC said a developer will be chosen in January, and construction expected to start next summer.

"By making key investments in our rail infrastructure now, we will be ready for the future," Gargano said.

[Ellatur]

i saw this on NY1 yestereve. they had some renderings and it looked pretty ok

[New Jack City]

Visuals:

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_modelphoto.jpg
Picture of a model of the new station/post office, with the station on the left.

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_night_above.jpg
Night rendition of the same.

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_concourse.jpg
The proposed concourse.

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_tickets.jpg
The new ticket window/information area. The glass portion will rise 150 feet above the ticket windows to match the height, but not appearance, of the original waiting room.

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_trainview.jpg
What the train boarding area will look like.

[Gendo]

I like the connecting atrium. It needs some plant life in there though.

[7 World Trade]

that's definitely good news. it'll bring back the glory to penn station. still, moynihan doesn't sound right at all. just call it penn station dood...

[giergel]

It's build in ART DECO style? I like that!

[Ellatur]

is this definitely gonna be built? or is it not approved yet?

[FerrariEnzo]

My bet is that it will be constructed, in one form or another.

[The Urban Politician]

I don't like the idea of building something to resemble the structure that it's replacing (i.e. the "old Penn Station")

The Old Penn Station was a masterpiece and a monument that is now long gone, and attempts to create something that will "kinda" look like it don't sound like a good idea. I think they should go with a completely modern-forward-thinking design.

The past is the past--preserve what you can. But anything new should be just that--new.

Chicago could do a better job learning that lesson

[bagel]

But the thing is a structure already exists. Given the location of the railyards and the current platforms, to do something according to your proposal, they would either have to tear down the current Farley Building or tear down Madison Square Garden, under which the current Penn Station lies. Given this situation, turning the Farley Post Office Building into a train station is forward looking and at the same time preserves a historical structure.

[New Jack City]

NY Times

3 Designs Submitted for Midtown Train Station

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2005/02/25/nyregion/station.span.jpg
One design for a new station in the Farley post office on Eighth Avenue - by a partnership of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust - uses a glass and steel canopy that will encompass the entry lobby.

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: February 25, 2005

New York State officials announced yesterday that they would choose from among three developers to transform the city's central post office into a new Midtown train station serving commuters on New Jersey Transit and possibly the Long Island Rail Road.

The selection of one of the three design proposals submitted Friday is expected to take place by June and would mark an important step forward for the plans to create a new train station in memory of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed the effort before his death in 2003.

The project, across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, has proceeded in fits and starts for the last decade, but officials now hope to begin construction by the end of this year and complete the station by 2010.

"The quality and scope of the various proposals put forth for Moynihan Station show the importance of this project as a gateway to New York City," said Charles A. Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation.

The design proposals all incorporate what has playfully become known as the potato chip - a shapely glass and steel canopy that will encompass the new station's entry lobby. That canopy, designed by David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, would envelop a series of concourses that slip under the post office building, letting light flow onto the train platforms below ground.

The three proposals also include a well-lit atrium and a passageway along 32nd Street linking Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

The agency has secured $600 million in public funds to build the 400,000-square-foot train station. In addition, the site will include 250,000 square feet for the Postal Service and 750,000 square feet for retail, office or residential use.

The developers are Boston Properties, Tishman Speyer and a partnership of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust.

Whoever who wins the competition will also acquire the rights to privately develop and control the 750,000 square feet under a long-term lease. Mr. Gargano would not specify the features of each proposal, but he said they included a warehouse-type store, a boutique or business hotel, a museum, public space for exhibits and live performances, a rooftop banquet hall and space for retail stores.

The project effectively dates to 1963, when the former Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece designed by McKim, Mead & White, was demolished over protests by preservationists and architects. The current Madison Square Garden was built on the site over a labyrinthine terminal for Amtrak, the two commuter railroads and two sets of subway lines.

In 1998, officials announced they would lease 400,000 square feet of space in the James A. Farley Post Office Building, built in 1914, for a new station. But in 2002, the agency agreed to buy the entire site, on Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets, for $230 million.

The current Penn Station serves 550,000 passengers a day. "It is horrible right now," Mr. Gargano said. "It is congested, not roomy, not pleasant to look at. It's like walking through a cave."

[GVNY]

That is strange. I had always thought they had the design finalized. I hope they do something good with this oppurtunity.

[Mr Man]

I love it! Hope it's built.

[lammius]

This in combination with THE Tunnel will make travel to NYC much improved!

[Ellatur]

That is strange. I had always thought they had the design finalized. I hope they do something good with this oppurtunity.
thats what i thought. i thought it was all done

[asohn]

This in combination with THE Tunnel will make travel to NYC much improved!

Well is THE tunnel approved? Did NJTransit get the funding?

[GVNY]

NEWSDAY

From Farley to Moynihan

BY JOSHUA ROBIN
March 7, 2005

Forty years after a wrecking ball razed one of the city's icons, the old Pennsylvania Station, a new transit hub that many say resurrects the lost grandeur is slowly rising from the proverbial dust.

State officials are reviewing three proposed renovations for the Farley Post Office, the beaux arts building across from Madison Square Garden that will supplement the subterranean station now under the arena.

The winner is to be announced within three months, with the terminal opening in 2010, said Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation.

"It's going to happen," Gargano said of the $600 million project to be paid for with a combination of state, city, federal and Port Authority funds.

The new station, to be named after its longtime champion, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, would double the size of the current Penn Station -- the nation's busiest station, with 550,000 daily passengers. It would also give commuters a glimpse of the sky -- like the old station -- before boarding, unlike now when passengers are shrouded in artificial light.

Maura Moynihan, the senator's daughter, called the new station a "masterpiece," with the current terminal "that hole under a basketball court."

There are no planned changes to where Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit trains will stop.

Customers instead will have more room inside the station, and more entrances, stretching from Seventh to Ninth Avenues. Plans to house Amtrak in the complex were dropped, but the state is in talks with the LIRR and NJ Transit.

The proposals keep the original design to bisect the post office with a puffed-out, glass dome that developers have taken to calling "the chip," for its resemblance to the snack. Also untouched is a plan to keep 400,000 square feet for the station and 250,000 square feet for a remaining post office. They differ in what they plan to do with 750,000 square feet; suggestions vary from a hotel, a large retailer, a museum and a banquet hall.

A decision hasn't yet been reached whether to build on top of the terminal, Gargano said.

What won't change is the Farley's signature colonnade, built by the same architects the old Pennsylvania Station: McKim, Mead and White.

"'Only in New York could you tear down a beaux-arts masterpiece only to find another one by the same architects across the street,'" Moynihan said, quoting her father.


http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-03/16589503.jpg


http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-03/16589509.jpg


http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-03/16589500.jpg


http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-03/16589488.jpg


Bonus: http://www.subjectverb.com/www/writing/thesis.pdf

[GVNY]

I hope this turns out well. You guys know my contempt for this project as of now. We could really make something magnificent with this oppurtunity, and I just don't want to throw some glass up in the air and call it a day. What a horrendous waiste.


Nothing Makes a New Yorker happier than the sight of an old building rich in memories of the past- unless it is tearing the damn thing down and replacing it with something in chromium and plate glass, with no traditions at all.

- "Faceless Warrens," Time, Jan. 23, 1950

[New Jack City]

Pictures of the proposals, thanks to Derek2k3 and Stern:

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/40595823.jpg

This one's tower looks like Goldman Sachs in Jersey, doesn't it?

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/40595825.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/40595827/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/40595828.jpg

[Ellatur]

i like the first proposal the best

[GVNY]

I just hope the glass on the towers are blue/reflective.

[NapHsu4922]

The first one I like the best. I don't really like the second or last one that much.

[7 World Trade]

i don't think a building on top of the new station's necessary, but if it is, i'll prefer the first. it looks nice, and not too big either.

the building in proposal 4 looks like a nice modern design that we can use, with some minor changes and an increase in height, for the new wtc (though it's no better than the original twins, it's definitely a better alternative than the freedom tower).

[bagel]

I don't like any of them. If they feel the need to put a massive structure on top, I'd rather they do something low and wide rather than tall and narrow. The building screws with the proportions of the base.

[cphdude]

i like the first proposal the best
Agreed...

[New Jack City]

NY Times

Team Chosen for Project to Develop Transit Hub

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/18/nyregion/18penn.450.jpg
A rendering of an earlier design for the new station, which will occupy the James A. Farley Post Office, a soaring Beaux-Arts building.

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: July 18, 2005

The Pataki administration plans to announce today that it has selected a development team to transform the general post office in Midtown Manhattan into a dramatic new $930 million transit hub, a long-awaited project that proponents say will be a catalyst for development and an opportunity for civic redemption.

The Empire State Development Corporation has picked a joint venture of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust to turn the blocklong James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into a grand Moynihan Station, named after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senator who was its champion until his death in 2003. The project includes not only a train station but also a major block of space for retail, office or residential use.

"It's my hope that it'll be a great train station, serving as the city's front door," said David A. Childs, an architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who had designed an earlier version of the Moynihan renovation. "It would be a chance to reclaim the glory of the original Penn Station."

The post office, most of which was built in 1913, sits across Eighth Avenue from the existing Penn Station, a warren of crowded, below-ground passageways connecting two commuter railroads and two subway lines. That is all that is left of the original station, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece demolished in 1963 despite protests by preservationists and architects. Many of Penn Station's existing tracks and platforms, which serve nearly 550,000 passengers a day in the city's busiest transportation hub, already extend beneath the post office.

The original station and the post office share a classical style and the same architect: McKim, Mead & White. The post office's grand staircase on Eighth Avenue and the long row of 53-foot-high Corinthian columns will remain intact, and the Postal Service will maintain a small presence for retail patrons.

The Moynihan Station's principal tenant will be New Jersey Transit, which is desperate for additional platforms. New York State has already made a $20 million down payment on the $230 million purchase of the Farley building from the Postal Service.

State and city officials, urban planners and developers say that the station could accelerate development of the formerly industrial neighborhood west of the post office.

"This project provides a critical addition to the city's transportation infrastructure and offers tremendous economic development opportunities for the neighborhood," said Andrew M. Alper, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation.

The selection is a victory for Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado and one of the largest commercial landlords in Manhattan, and Stephen M. Ross, chairman of Related, the most prolific and politically connected developer in the city today. Vornado has made a major investment in the area around Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, where it owns skyscrapers containing six million square feet of office space, as well as the Hotel Pennsylvania, across Seventh Avenue from Madison Square Garden, and several retail properties.

The joint venture competed against Boston Properties and Tishman Speyer for the project. Vornado and Related were able to offer more money, according to a government official involved in the negotiations, because Vornado intends to transfer about one million square feet of development rights from the post office site to a parcel at the northeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street, where it plans to build a tower.

The two companies will pay about $300 million for the development rights and an annual payment in lieu of property taxes, which has not been disclosed. The size of the payment was a point of contention between state and city officials. City officials had wanted the amount to be higher than real estate taxes downtown so the development would not compete with the rebuilding effort in Lower Manhattan.

Vornado and Related have been working with architects at Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum and James Carpenter Design Associates. But it is unclear what remains of Mr. Childs's 1999 design for a soaring, asymmetrical glass and steel canopy that would funnel light into a great entry hall. The government official, who has seen the new plans, said that Mr. Childs's design had been "modified."

The Moynihan project has traveled a twisted and difficult path since Mr. Moynihan first secured federal funds for the project. It now has the support of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Gov. George E. Pataki and Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation.

It was first conceived as train station, principally for Amtrak, that would take up about half the Farley building. But the project grew in size and scope to include office space. The Postal Service agreed to move out, but then reconsidered.

The Postal Service relented in 2002, but last year, Amtrak dropped out of the project because of money problems. Its ticket windows and track entrances will remain east of Eighth Avenue.

Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, said he considered the Moynihan Station to be a far more significant project for the future of the Far West Side of Manhattan than the ill-fated $2.2 billion stadium for the Jets. He said it would bring the "portals" of the city's busiest transit hub farther west, from Eighth Avenue to Ninth Avenue, which should spur development in the surrounding neighborhood and provide confidence for commercial builders.

[TalB]

I hope that thing that is sticking out will not be part of the final design, b/c it looks very ugly.

[Ellatur]

^yea... maybe it will be better if the glasses are in color

[7 World Trade]

yep, they should revise it until it no longer looks like it's gonna collapse. and they should implement more architecture that pays tribute to the original penn station.

dood, why can't they just call it the penn station? im sure few people would even bother to say "moynihan" when it's so much easier to say "penn".

[New Jack City]

NY Daily News

New Penn Station no longer dream
Developers chosen for $818M project

BY PAUL D. COLFORD
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

State and city officials yesterday named the developers who will replace one of the city's lost jewels - the old Pennsylvania Station - with a new gem.

After years of delay, the city, state and two big developers are all aboard with a design to turn the main post office on Eighth Ave. into a grand transit hub recalling the elegant Pennsylvania Station that was razed in 1963.

The $818 million plan will preserve the handsome facade of the James A. Farley Post Office, erected in 1913, while adapting the building as the new Daniel Patrick Moynihan Station, to honor the late U.S. senator, who pushed hard for the idea.

"This is going to be a magnificent gateway for New York," Gov. Pataki said at yesterday's unveiling of the design, which also calls for shops, restaurants and a boutique hotel.

Pataki noted that more than 500,000 subway, NJTransit, Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak riders a day now use Penn Station, a bland hub located across Eighth Ave. He called the current location "horribly inadequate." It's "certainly not an appropriate gateway to the greatest city in the world," he added.

As envisioned by James Carpenter Design Associates, in collaboration with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, the new central train hall will mirror the old Penn Station through the addition of tall, steel arches on which will sit a huge, yet lightweight, skylight.

A second, so-called "grid shell skylight" will be set atop a hall to be located roughly in the middle of the building, between Eighth and Ninth Aves., that will serve as a taxi station and baggage dropoff.

The winning plan for the project was submitted by a team of major New York developers, The Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust, which has extensive holdings in the area.

The companies will put up about $300 million of the projected $818 million cost at different stages before the work is completed in 2010.

The city, state and federal governments and the Port Authority are also helping to fund the project, whose main transit beneficiary will be NJTransit trains.

The congestion that commuters now face in reaching the track level in Penn Station will be relieved with the addition of staircases and other access to 11 platforms that already sit under the Farley building.

The Postal Service will occupy 250,000 square feet.

Up to 1 million square feet of air rights will be applied to the northeast corner of Eighth Ave. and 33rd St., where a Duane Reade store now stands. A residential tower is expected to rise there, next to Vornado-owned 1Penn Plaza.

"The completion of the Moynihan Station gives a second chance to recapture the extraordinary station that once was Penn Station," said Charles Gargano, chairman of the state Economic Development Corp.

Gargano's agency spearheaded the plan and arranged for the planned purchase of the Farley building from the Postal Service for $230 million.

Yesterday's unveiling was the latest chapter in a long-running effort to give the Farley building new life as a transit hub.

Moynihan's dream project seemed far along six years ago, when then-President Bill Clinton came to New York to join Pataki and the senator in introducing plans for "the new Penn Station" in the Farley building.

Amtrak, the owner of Penn Station, was then onboard, but has since pulled back its planned financial contribution.

Mayor Bloomberg said the project will create more than 10,000 construction jobs, more than 3,300 permanent jobs and more than $50 million a year intax revenue, and provide an anchor destination amid plans for new West Side development.

Originally published on July 19, 2005

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/488-penn.JPG
Artist's rendition of the new Pennsylvania Station (above and below), which is expected to be completed in 2010 and will feature a huge skylight that will sit on steel arches.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/675-penn_w.JPG

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/3-b_p_m.JPG
Maura Moynihan, the late senator's daughter, makes a point outside the James A. Farley Post Office as Mayor Bloomberg (left) and Gov. Pataki consider the present Penn Station.

[TalB]

dood, why can't they just call it the penn station? im sure few people would even bother to say "moynihan" when it's so much easier to say "penn".
I too don't why it still can't use that name especially since that's what it was known as for nearly a century.

[New Jack City]

Pics, and comparison with old and new Penn station...

http://www.nylovesbiz.com/moynihan_station.htm

[bagel]

Couple of things:
1) when did SOM get thrown off the project? Or was it ever theirs? The "potato chip" wasn't perfect but it showed promise, I thought. It was modern and airy. (not disparaging the new design, which I also find modern and airy)

2) sucks that Amtrak will stay in the old Penn Station beneath MSG. I mean more train passengers do come from Jersey via NJT but as a gateway to the rest of the country, Penn "Moynihan" Station would've been cool for Amtrak. Damn the federal government for not funding Amtrak and subsidizing it the same way it subsidizes the national highway system.

3) It's going to be a long hike for the people coming on the NJT to get to the NY subways.

4) They better have monster airconditioning units in the summer. I can see that place as a big greenhouse. I hope they use some kind of filtering, reflective glass.

[Ellatur]

i do not feel that fondly from these new projects
look how many projects in the city got screwed up...

[7 World Trade]

as for the problem of long hikes to the nyc subways, i don't think that will be an issue. if the platforms are gonna be under the farley post office building (between 8th and 9th ave), the distance to the 8th ave subway line shouldn't be that far. but walking to the 7th ave subway line will probably be a pain in the butt.

but as stated earlier, some of the platforms in the original penn station already extends westward beyond 8th ave to beneath the post office building itself, so i don't think it'll make much of a difference.

i appreciate the government's efforts to mirror the original penn station's glass roof. but from the looks of the renderings, it seemed more like a half-hearted effort. maybe adding more columns and get rid of the roof's warped look will help.

[New Jack City]

Couple of things:
1) when did SOM get thrown off the project? Or was it ever theirs? The "potato chip" wasn't perfect but it showed promise, I thought. It was modern and airy. (not disparaging the new design, which I also find modern and airy)

No clue why SOM isn't on the project anymore, their design for the station was by David Childs, I guess he's too busy at the WTC site. Architects mentioned are Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, P.C., and James Carpenter Design Associates but is that just for the hall or the whole thing?

Larger renderings from Newsday...

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-07/18537731.jpg

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-07/18537729.jpg

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-07/18534902.jpg

[BigMac]

New York Times
July 21, 2005

With Many Modifications, Penn Station Project Is 'Go'

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/21/nyregion/21blocks2_lg.jpg
A model of the latest design for the expanded Pennsylvania Station, to be known as Moynihan Station, after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Overlooked in the fanfare this week over the announcement that the long-delayed Pennsylvania Station expansion project will be taken over by two powerful developers, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, is the fact that the design has been significantly altered. Again.

The first design, by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, was unveiled in 1992; the second, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, in 1999. The latest is by James Carpenter Design Associates, with the collaboration of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum.

The basic idea is still the same: to expand passenger operations westward from the claustrophobic existing station into the James A. Farley Building, the monumental General Post Office from 1913. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White, architects of the original Pennsylvania Station, as a neo-Classical companion piece across Eighth Avenue.

Important details of the latest Farley project - formally Moynihan Station, after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, its outspoken champion until his death in 2003 - have been changed by the new developers and their architectural team.

Perhaps most notably, Moynihan Station has lost the 150-foot-high steel and glass shell proposed by David M. Childs of Skidmore, which would have bisected the blocklong Farley Building and given it a strikingly modern profile in midblock, extending well above the roofline and beyond the existing facades on 31st and 33rd Streets.

(Less than a month ago, another bravura Skidmore plan - for the torqued, cable-laced Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site - was also shelved.)

The latest design creates a significantly different volume in the train hall and concourse that will occupy the former mail-sorting room at the heart of the post office.

Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum's original plan called for a skylight in the form of a 120-foot parabolic arch rising within the interior courtyard occupied by the sorting room. Skidmore proposed to modify and refurbish the existing shed roof and skylight, which would have been about 70 feet over the upper floor of a new two-level concourse.

James Carpenter and Kenneth Drucker, the senior principal and director of design in the New York office of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, have instead proposed a single-level concourse, which will save money. More than 100 feet overhead, an undulating grid of skylights supported on six great columns will recall - though not replicate - the roof of the original McKim, Mead & White concourse. There will be similar skylights over a midblock hall.

"We took the premise of opening up the building through light," Mr. Carpenter said.

The new approach to the train hall will permit all the interior courtyard windows, many of which will be part of a new hotel, to overlook the concourse without obstruction. "We wanted to engage the hotel with the functions of Moynihan Station and not feel like you're separated from it," Mr. Drucker said.

CHARLES A. GARGANO, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation and the subsidiary Moynihan Station Development Corporation, said that officials favored the Related-Vornado project in part because it would transfer unused development rights from the post office to a nearby site.

"It means there will be no new tower built atop the Farley Building," he said.

But neither will there be a shell. This skylight over the midblock transportation hall was to have been shaped like the section of a larger, imaginary sphere. Its shallow concave form reminded some viewers of a giant potato chip. This being New York, the land of Lipstick and Flatiron Buildings, that nickname stuck.

"One of the concerns we had about the chip was that you would have to blow out the facades of the 31st and 33rd Street sides," Mr. Gargano said. "And we wanted to keep as much of the facade as possible." Such decisions affect the project's eligibility for historic preservation tax credits.

Mr. Gargano said there were savings from not building the chip. But he added, "While the chip appeared very dramatic - and I'm not taking anything away from S.O.M. - if indeed we want to recapture the old Penn Station, I think we're doing it more by utilizing the design we have."

Maura Moynihan, a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, recalled that her father "loved the chip," and she allowed that the design had changed since he unveiled it six years ago with Gov. George E. Pataki and President Bill Clinton. So has the world. "The budget was in surplus," Ms. Moynihan said. "This was pre-9/11. This was pre-Iraq invasion. And it was possible to think bigger and plan bigger."

Given the realities surrounding the Moynihan Station project, she said, "The fact that it's still on the books at all I consider a blessing, a miracle."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[bagel]

Now that I think about it some more, I think that while I like the skylight idea for the new concourse a lot, I also like the signature impact of the potato chip. It appeared to embrace the past but also looked like it belonged to the present and the future. Like Maura Moynihan said in the above article, "This was pre-9/11. This was pre-Iraq invasion. And it was possible to think bigger and plan bigger." The chip was bigger and more impactful.

[Ellatur]

hmm i definitely liked the other design more

[New Jack City]

Compare...old and new design:

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_concourse.jpg http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-07/18537729.jpg

http://www.trainweb.org/rshs/nycity_new_night_above.jpghttp://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-07/18537731.jpg

[Ellatur]

hmm.. the ceiling of the interior of the old design is ugly i admit, but the overall design is still better than the new one. Especially the outer roofing-thingy

what do you guys think?

[bagel]

I like a combination of the two. Potato chip wedged in between the two halves. And the high skylight of the second design.

[7 World Trade]

i prefer a hybrid of the two roof cover designs, but it's good that they threw out the giant potato chip in the 2nd design.

[bagel]

Don't know if this should be a new thread... I decided to post this here since it's not REALLY a project yet. So Cablevision, those anti-Jets Stadium yahoos, is thinking of tearing down the current Madison Square Garden and building a new one one block to the west. Guess who lives one block to the west? Yes, yes yes, it's our good friend the new Moynihan Penn Station (they want the half of the block closest to 9th Ave).

What do you all think? Would this be wise? I know we have no renderings yet, but would a massive stadium destroy the classical lines of the venerable Farley Post Office building?

Today's NY Times.

September 12, 2005
Madison Square Garden's Owners Are in Talks to Replace It, a Block West

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
The owners of Madison Square Garden, the arena that traces its origins back to P. T. Barnum 131 years ago and became the site of New York City's most famous boxing matches and basketball games, are in talks with two developers to build its fifth incarnation, a block west of its current home atop Pennsylvania Station.

If the project moves forward, a new Garden will rise at the western end of the James A. Farley Post Office, according to executives who have been briefed on the negotiations between the Garden and the developers Stephen M. Ross, chairman of Related Companies, and Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust. The Farley Post Office, bordered by Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets, is being transformed into a grand new transit hub to be called Moynihan Station.

The new Garden, which would remain home to the Rangers and the Knicks, would improve on the arena's cramped and inefficient quarters by featuring wide concourses with stores and restaurants, luxury boxes with better sight lines for basketball and hockey games, a museum and a hall of fame.

Like the three prior incarnations of the Garden, the existing arena, which sits like a giant doughnut amid the Penn Plaza office complex between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, would be demolished. It would be replaced by skyscrapers containing a mix of luxury apartments, office space and stores.

Mr. Roth, who owns many of the office buildings and stores surrounding the Garden, and Mr. Ross, the most active developer in the city, were selected in July to turn the Farley Post Office into a $930 million train and subway gateway to the city. The hub would be an extension of Penn Station, which lies below the Garden.

"It's almost a precondition that the Garden has to move for Penn Plaza to fulfill its destiny as a first-class office center," said Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive of CB Richard Ellis in New York and a former real estate adviser to the Garden. "It's logical that a great transportation hub like Pennsylvania Station be surrounded by some of the city's great office towers."

But just as the Garden is steeped in the city's history, the decision to relocate is tangled in political intrigue.

In 2003 and 2004, the Bloomberg administration urged the Garden, which is owned by Cablevision and controlled by Charles and James Dolan, to move either three blocks west to the 12th Avenue railyards or to the post office site, in the hope of silencing the Dolans' opposition to a stadium for the Jets over the railyards.

Instead, the Dolans announced in June 2004 that they would spend more than $300 million renovating the Garden, pointedly declaring that unlike the Jets, they would do so "without taxpayer money." They also poured tens of millions of dollars into television ads depicting the ill-fated $2.2 billion stadium as the mayor's folly. In a battle of the billionaires, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg blasted back, describing the Dolans as selfish and greedy.

The stadium project ultimately failed to gain support in the State Legislature and died this June, shortly before Mr. Ross and Mr. Roth were selected to develop Moynihan Station. It was not long before the developers renewed their effort to lure the Garden westward.

"It's ironic that Cablevision may come out of this a double winner, not only defeating the Jets, but achieving an optimal location," Ms. Tighe said.

The talks are at an early stage, and neither side wants to talk publicly about the project. A spokesman for Mr. Roth said that "he never comments during negotiations."

But according to executives who know of the discussions, the issues include how much money the developers would pay for the property, a sum that could easily exceed $500 million, and whether the Garden would get a stake in the new skyscrapers. There is also a question of whether a new Garden could be shoehorned into the existing post office annex on Ninth Avenue, or require demolition and a new building.

The developers, who envision gleaming new towers and glass canopies over Penn Station, contend that a new commercial and residential district will emerge if the Garden vacates its site, the executives said. The city would gain jobs and tax revenues, since the Garden has a property tax exemption that is worth more than $10 million a year.

Still, the Garden's owners are not taking any chances. They continue to pursue plans for a renovation.

Any plans to move the Garden and redevelop its current site would require city approval.

The idea of moving the Garden off its current location is not new.

Eighteen years ago, Paul Reichmann, a Canadian real estate tycoon who headed Olympia & York, then the city's largest commercial landlord, put together a $2.5 billion deal to move the Garden to the railyards and build new set of skyscrapers designed by Frank Gehry on the existing site. Mr. Reichmann viewed the Far West Side as Manhattan's last frontier.

But ultimately, the Garden, then owned by Gulf and Western, scuttled the deal, saying it was too expensive and too risky to move away from Penn Station.

The Garden's peripatetic existence is but one example of how some of the city's public spaces often succumbed to private real estate deals.

In 1874, P. T. Barnum opened Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome in an old train depot at Madison Avenue and 26th Street. He was succeeded by another impresario, Patrick S. Gilmore, who took over the building in 1876 and renamed it Gilmore's Garden. Then, in 1879, William H. Vanderbilt took control of the building and christened it Madison Square Garden.

Mr. Vanderbilt focused on sports rather than oddities, creating a track for competitive cycling, building the first artificial ice rink in North America and sponsoring boxing exhibitions with John L. Sullivan. He knocked the building down in 1889, replacing it with an entertainment hall designed by McKim, Mead & White. It had the country's largest auditorium, a concert hall and cabaret, becoming home to the National Horse Show, the Westminster Kennel Club show, boxing matches, bicycle races, circuses and rodeos.

But in 1925, Garden II was demolished to make way for the headquarters of New York Life Insurance. A new Garden opened uptown, at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street, becoming famous for boxing, college basketball's National Invitation Tournament and the New York Knicks. Sonja Henie took her Hollywood Ice Revue there in 1938. But the building had poor sight lines and few amenities. (It is now the site of the Worldwide Plaza office tower.)

It was replaced in 1968 by the current Garden, a circular arena atop Pennsylvania Station. It was here that Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali on points in 1971, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon presided over the marriages of 2,075 couples in 1982, and the Rangers won Game 7 of the Stanley Cup championship in 1994.

[NYC-GDL]

HI first time here. NY. needs to bilt higher, we can't be left behind

[alexx02]

I love the new design. I think it's great. The old potato chip design was interesting, but I like the way this one recalls the old Penn Station.

Next question, when tehy say the new MSG, do they mean it will knock down some of the Farley station? Or will it be built in another space. I'm just curious.

[7 World Trade]

^ i hope they won't demolish part of the farley post office for it. otherwise, it can be said that we learned nothing from the demise of the original penn station.

if they're really gonna demolish the west part of the post office building to build the 5th madison square garden, then i say that it's better to just renovate the current one. sure, it killed the penn station, but demolishing it won't bring the original penn station back, so why bother?

[bagel]

If they do move the Garden to the west, the best that I could hope for is for them to shoehorn it into the Farley... I think they do pretty well situated where they are right now and seems a lot more accessible. Why would they want to move west? It seems like a wasted effort for them to move Penn Station out from the bowels of MSG only to have MSG sit on top of Penn Station again.

[TalB]

Honestly, I think that MSG has been moved enough times. Originally when the owner wanted to build MSG V, it was going to be where the Jets stadium was proposed, but that was really to get a deal with the unions. As a result, the current one, MSG IV, was rennovated and is now better than ever. What will replace it if it is to be demolished? A new terminal building for Penn Station?

[TalB]

http://www.nysun.com/article/20537
Mayor Seeking Momentum on Penn Station

BY JEREMY SMERD - Special to the Sun
September 26, 2005

The Dalai Lama, usually preoccupied with matters of religion or foreign policy, yesterday tackled a more mundane matter, endorsing the idea of spending nearly $1 billion to turn the Farley Post Office in Manhattan into a new train station for commuters.

The Dalai Lama appeared yesterday on the steps of the post office with Mayor Bloomberg at an event designed to lend momentum to the construction of what would be called Moynihan Station, after the senator from New York who died in 2003. The senator's daughter, Maura, also attended the event.

The religious and political leader of the people of Tibet said that it was his "unique, close friendship" with Daniel Patrick Moynihan that led to his interest in the train station. For years a harsh critic of Chinese policies in Tibet, which led to the deaths of a million Tibetans and the destruction of thousands of monasteries, Moynihan championed a congressional resolution that recognized the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile.

Yesterday, speaking through a translator, the Dalai Lama said the station will "contribute to the joy and ease of movement for the people of this city." Then he interrupted himself with his halting English. "We should carry out his wish," he said with a broad smile.

The $930 million Moynihan Station would transform the beaux-arts James A. Farley Post Office, bordered by Eighth and Ninth avenues and 31st and 33rd streets, into a 400,000-square-foot train station that would expand commuter railroad service in the region, serving New Jersey Transit and possibly other commuter lines. It is slated to include an additional 250,000 square feet for the U.S. Postal Service and 750,000 square feet for retail, office, or residential use.

Plans for the station have proceeded in fits and starts for more than a decade.

By the time the senator died in 2003, he had earmarked nearly $800 million for the project, Maura Moynihan, who is a fellow at the Regional Plan Association, said.

The project, though, had become overshadowed by plans to rebuild Lower Manhattan in the wake of September 11, 2001, the mayor's unsuccessful efforts to construct a West Side stadium, and a host of other transportation projects such as plans for a Second Avenue subway line and a link between JFK Airport and Lower Manhattan.

Last year, Congress nearly reallocated $40 million from Moynihan Station to the extension of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal known as East Side Access.

Yesterday's appearance by the 70-year-old Dalai Lama comes at a time of renewed interest in the station.

In July, the Empire State Development Corporation, which is charged with developing the site, selected Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust to develop the building.

Also this summer, Ms. Moynihan joined the Regional Plan Association to help promote her father's vision.

"The Dalai Lama really wanted to say thank you to his friends who were there during the lean years," she told The New York Sun, referring to the time before 1987 when the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize and the plight of Tibetan statehood became an international cause celebre.

Mr. Bloomberg, who took some criticism early in his administration for meeting with the vice president of Communist China, yesterday gave the key to the city to the Dalai Lama, who is considered an enemy by the Chinese government. Mr. Bloomberg called the vision of a new station Moynihan's "final gift."

"It will stand, I think, as a fitting tribute to Pat Moynihan as well as a bold monument to the international spirit the Dalai Lama has dedicated his life to," the mayor said.

The Dalai Lama normally eschews such honors and has refused offers of citizenship from other countries. Usually speaking of himself as nothing more than a simple monk, he retains his legal status as a displaced refugee who fled Tibet in 1959. But with about 3,000 Tibetans living in the tri-state area, and thousands more who traveled to the city yesterday to receive his blessing, he received the key graciously.

With the project eight years behind schedule, its proponents say they hope yesterday's endorsement by the Dalai Lama will give Moynihan Station new momentum to build, as Mr. Bloomberg put it yesterday, "a grand gateway to millions from around the world."

The Dalai Lama, who is recovering from a cold, is scheduled to complete his two-week tour of America today with an appearance at Columbia University, which is marking a newly endowed faculty position in Tibetan Buddhist studies.

[bagel]

What the heck? Why would the Dalai Lama's opinion on Penn Station matter?

[7 World Trade]

^ well, if the dalai lama talks about it and endorses it, it'll help to create more public awareness about this new project to resurrect the former grandeur of the penn station. i mean, im sure that not many people outside nyc know about this project, but once someone really famous endorses it, it'll make the news.

it's just like how the team twin towers movement was largely obscure to many people, even to native new yorkers, until trump openly endorsed the idea of rebuilding the twins and embraced the belton-gardner plan.

the endorsement of products by athletes and stars work pretty much the same way too. it's all about the marketing.

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/realestate/16scap.html
Is Old Penn Station's Killer Significant? Or Unforgivable?

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: October 16, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/16/realestate/scape.583.1.jpg
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

A BUILDING WE LOVE TO HATE? It is included in a list of significant modern buildings because of how its urban-planning changes affected the city. But one critic calls it "unforgivable by any standard."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/14/realestate/scape.184.23.jpg
www.metrohistory.com

Madison Square Garden in 1970.

ARE you exhausted by the drawn-out battle to preserve the architect Edward Durell Stone's 1965 art museum at Columbus Circle? Well, if you couldn't get your head around landmark protection for that Venetian-marble fantasy, you may gulp at the next threatened work of mid-20th-century architecture to be considered important.

Included in a list of significant modern buildings in Manhattan by three leading preservation organizations, including the local chapter of the modern architecture group Docomomo U.S., is one that may make you wince: the 1968 Madison Square Garden, which infamously wiped out the original Pennsylvania Station.

By the late 1950's, the old Penn Station, designed by McKim, Mead & White at Seventh Avenue south of 34th Street, was dying. It was a half-century-old monument to rail travel gasping for breath in a new atmosphere of airplane fuel and automobile gasoline.

A development group led by Irving Felt floated plans for a vast, futuristic arena with a swooping, saddle-shaped roof and two Guggenheim Museum-like swirls on one end. It had the goofy grandeur of a Martian spaceport from Popular Science magazine. The project was designed by Charles Luckman, who had trained as an architect but became president of Lever Brothers and was in large part responsible for commissioning the firm's sleek 1952 headquarters, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, at 52nd Street and Park Avenue.

The arena project found a landing place on the site of Penn Station. The possible demise of the station's brooding grandeur for what was to become the new Madison Square Garden provoked a storm of controversy. But the preservationist Harmon Goldstone, later the chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, wrote optimistically: "Is the proposed new building, for its own purpose in its own idiom, going to be as inspiring a design as McKim, Mead & White's? There is no reason why it cannot be."

Luckman, who had returned to architecture, reduced his design to a drum-shaped 20,000-seat arena, with a facade of precast concrete panels. To avoid interior columns, the structural engineers Severud-Perrone-Fischer-Sturm-Conlin-Bandel designed a 400-foot-wide roof supported by cables, in the manner of the Roman Colosseum, which had a fabric roof.

Perhaps not expecting much, contemporary critics said little about the resulting Madison Square Garden. In 1967, Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic of The New York Times, briefly called it "neither avant-garde nor high architectural art." The magazine Progressive Architecture noted that, based on the rate of replacement of prior Madison Square Gardens - this was its fourth incarnation, taking over for one at 49th Street and Eighth Avenue - "the present one should come down about the year 2000."

But later writers did not hesitate to weigh in. Among them was Paul Goldberger, the successor to Ms. Huxtable as architecture critic for The Times. In his book "The City Observed: New York" (Random House, 1979) he called it "a graceless, sloppy, cheap entertainment and office complex that would be an insult to an empty site in the middle of nowhere."

"For this," he said, "there is no excuse."

And Richard David Story, in New York magazine in 1987, listed it in the top 10 of "The Buildings New Yorkers Love to Hate," along with the World Trade Center and the Edward Durell Stone building.

The site of Luckman's Madison Square Garden has been considered for redevelopment since the 1990's. Now its owner, Madison Square Garden Inc., is negotiating to build a new Garden nearby and to replace its 1968 building with a mixed-use complex. The new Garden would be just west of the current one, on Eighth Avenue, at the west end of the General Post Office building.

But architectural history is catching up with many iconic demons of 1960's architecture. Preservation organizations like Landmark West! are still fighting for landmark status for the Columbus Circle structure. Last year, the old Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), north of Grand Central Terminal, was the subject of a monograph, "The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream" (MIT Press, 2004), by Meredith Clausen, a professor of architectural history at the University of Washington, Seattle.

It was also last year that the "Manhattan Modern Map" was co-published by three groups: the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, at Columbia University; the World Monuments Fund; and the New York/Tristate chapter of Docomomo U.S., which is devoted to preserving modern architecture. A stimulating, provocative document, the map is available for $7 at www.urbancenterbooks.org.

The map includes more than 150 modern buildings built before 1980, noting that "the majority, recognized by local and national preservation organizations as significant, have not yet been singled out for protection in a formal designation process."

The list includes official landmarks, like the Guggenheim Museum, Lever House and the Whitney Museum. But it also lists lesser-known structures, like the Spartan-seeming Stuyvesant Town housing complex, from 14th to 20th Street between First Avenue and Avenue C, and the funky, pink brick United Parcel Service building at 43rd Street from 11th to 12th Avenue. It also lists Madison Square Garden.

The times in historic preservation have been a-changing since the landmarks law was passed in 1965, but to single out the successor to Penn Station plucks a sacrilegious chord.

"This building remains unforgivable by any standard," Mr. Goldberger, now dean of the Parsons School of Design, wrote in an e-mail message. Diana Goldstein, who was among those who sparked the original protests and picket lines around Penn Station in 1962, wrote in an e-mail, "Who on earth thinks that building is worth preserving?"

Nina Rappaport, co-chairwoman of Docomomo's local chapter, qualified the map's language. She wrote in an e-mail that "the reasoning was more for the building's urban-planning changes and how that affected the city, not for its architectural beauty."

But a decade or two ago, the idea of landmark designation for the Edward Durell Stone building would have been greeted by many with hoots - and now it is a preservation cause célèbre in New York, with another round of lawsuits under way.

Diane Jackier, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said by e-mail that the commission has "not made any determination" about the Garden, a statement that may cause old-line preservationists to cringe. But the case for landmark designation is, on the face of it, rather strong: it is a unique building, designed by an important architect, with unusual engineering and a complex history.

Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West!, said in an e-mail that the group has to mull the building's significance but that "I'm all for a public hearing for Madison Square Garden."

"It would tell us a lot about where we are in our ability to evaluate the architectural and historical significance of the recent past," she said. "The Landmarks Preservation Commission needs to embrace, not shy away from, this kind of discussion."

[TalB]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?&aid=55127&search_result=1&stid=8
New Jersey Transit Signs On As Moynihan Station Tenant

November 22, 2005

The Moynihan Station project took a big step forward Monday with the signing on of a tenant.

Until now, the plan to turn the Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into a train station has been looking for a railroad to sign on.

But New York State and New Jersey Transit reached a deal Monday. New JerseyTtransit plans to vacate its cramped quarters at Penn Station to become the principal tenant across the street in the renovated building.

Commuters will also be able to access the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak platforms through the new space, so even though those two railroads are technically staying put in the old Penn Station, riders will be able to take advantage of the new space.

[TalB]

Crain's

Time running out for new Garden deal

Developers would expand station, add hotel, office tower

By Anne Michaud
Published on January 16, 2006

Negotiations are intensifying over the construction of a spacious new Madison Square Garden in a renovated James A. Farley Post Office as a mid-February deadline looms.

The Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust are in talks to build a new Garden a block west, to the Ninth Avenue side of the Farley building, as part of their $556 million project turning the midtown property into the Moynihan Station transit hub.

The parameters of the deal are in flux. One scenario being discussed has Garden owner Cablevision Systems Corp. relinquishing air rights for the current facility. Related and Vornado would demolish it and revive the glory days when the original Penn Station was an architectural marvel and city gateway. The Garden sits atop the station, which since 1963 has been a warren of dark tunnels and fast-food shops.

The developers would install glass canopies over Penn Station and build towers for a convention hotel, offices, stores and apartments, say sources familiar with the negotiations between the companies and Cablevision.

Time is running out for a deal, though. After years of delay, Vornado and Related, bidding jointly, won the right in July to develop the post office. As envisioned then, the project--named in honor of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan--would expand Penn Station across Eighth Avenue, connect an array of subway and commuter lines, and create 700,000 square feet of space for retail, office and residential use. If, however, the developers and Cablevision can come to an agreement, a new Madison Square Garden would replace that mixed-use component.

The developers need a resolution one way or another within a month so that they can proceed with designing and cost analysis. They must guarantee a maximum construction cost by June, when New York state officials will close on the $230 million purchase of the post office from the federal government.

By moving Madison Square Garden, Cablevision executives Charles and James Dolan could replace the cramped, dated venue with wider concourses, stores and restaurants. Lucrative new luxury boxes would also offer better sight lines to Rangers and Knicks fans.

Grand new Garden

New York could emerge with a more beautiful train station in place of the Garden--grander even than the originally envisioned Moynihan Station. "It would be a fabulous improvement," says a government official familiar with the talks.

A Cablevision spokesman says that the company is considering all options.

The relocation plan could falter on economics. Cablevision now enjoys a city property tax break that amounts to more than $10 million a year. The Koch administration made the concession to keep the arena's business in the city. The Garden would lose that benefit in a new location, and government officials estimate that property taxes at the proposed site could total $75 million a year.

The Dolans have approached state officials about retaining the break. But Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corp., says New York state is unwilling to intervene in what is essentially a negotiation with city officials.

Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff says the Dolans have not spoken to him. Cablevision spent more than $30 million to defeat Mr. Doctoroff's dream of a West Side stadium to host the 2012 Olympic games, and the relationship is a bitter one.

"We've had no conversations with them at all," Mr. Doctoroff says. "You can be sure we will do the right thing for the city's financial health."

Comments? AMichaud@crain.com

[LeCom]

A week ago I attended a corporate lunch cause I'm a part of the design team for this thing.

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/nyregion/15garden.html?pagewanted=all
Madison Square Garden Owners Discuss One-Block Move

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: February 15, 2006

The owners of Madison Square Garden, the storied arena that is inextricably tied to the city's sports history, are close to an agreement with two developers to move one block west to a new $750 million home on Ninth Avenue, according to real estate executives and government officials.

Under the proposed agreement, the Garden would move to the western half of the block-long James A. Farley Building, the post office that is being transformed into a $930 million transit hub to be a gateway to New York City. It is to be called Moynihan Station, after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senator who was its champion until his death in 2003.

Moving the Garden to what would be its fifth home in 131 years would open up the possibility of transforming the dowdy site where the Garden now sits, on Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets. The developers, Stephen M. Ross of Related Companies and Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, would replace the current arena with a pair of skyscrapers and an elaborate glass skylight that would open up the crowded Pennsylvania Station down below, according to the officials and executives.

"This project has to respect the integrity of the Farley Building and create a grand gateway to the city," said Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, "but it would be a big plus for the city and the region if we could also gain transit capacity and regain the amenities of the old Penn Station by moving the Garden."

The owners of the Garden and the developers have been discussing the feasibility of the project for six months, although neither side has talked about it publicly. But at a fashion party at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center last week, an excited James L. Dolan, the chairman of the Garden, approached Charles A. Gargano, the state's top economic development official and chairman of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, saying he wanted to build a new home for the Knicks, Rangers and Liberty teams.

Mr. Gargano declined to go into detail about the conversation, but he confirmed that the developers, who were selected to create Moynihan Station, were interested in moving the Garden to the Farley and redeveloping the land where the arena now sits. Mr. Gargano said he would consider the proposal, but he did not "want it to delay the transportation project, which is the primary purpose here."

Even if the two sides come to terms in the coming weeks, however, the project would face a number of potential hitches. For one, it may prove difficult to put the Garden in the post office structure, which is a landmark building, without significantly affecting the facade. That could foil the Moynihan developers' desire to get valuable federal tax credits for historic preservation, which could cover 20 percent of the cost of the project.

For another, the move would need the approval of the man with whom the Garden owners slugged it out last year over an ultimately failed plan to build a football stadium on the West Side for the Jets: Michael R. Bloomberg. So far, city officials say there have been no formal talks between the owners of the Garden and Mayor Bloomberg. The city has taken the position in the past that the Garden's property tax exemption, which is worth more than $10 million a year, would not apply to a new site, even one a block away.

The developers have told city officials informally that moving the Garden would benefit the city by completely renovating Penn Station and by putting the land above it back on the tax rolls.

Some urban planners and preservationists also wonder whether an arena at the west end of the Farley building would overwhelm the very things that Senator Moynihan had sought to create: a train station that would allow Pennsylvania Station, which serves 550,000 commuters a day, to expand to the west and create a public space akin to Grand Central Terminal.

"Madison Square Garden has already eaten one Penn Station," said Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, a private planning group that has taken a keen interest in Moynihan Station.

Forty-three years ago, the original Penn Station, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece designed by McKim, Mead & White, was demolished to make way for the Garden. Architects and preservationists, still incensed by that decision, hope that the city can finally make amends by turning the Farley post office, which was also designed by McKim, Mead & White, into a dramatic public building.

The Farley is actually two structures: The original 1913 building, with the grand staircase on Eighth Avenue and two-block-long row of Corinthian columns, and an annex built in 1935. In an early design by the architect David Childs, a soaring glass arch over a public hall would bridge the space between the two structures.

But executives familiar with the plan say that the glass arch would be eliminated to make room for the Garden, although a concourse for commuters remains part of the plan. They also said that the Garden would rise above the height of the Farley building.

[BigMac]

Crain Communications
March 2, 2006

Cablevision agrees to build new Garden

by Anne Michaud

Cablevision Systems Corp. signed a memorandum of understanding to build a new Madison Square Garden one block west, on Ninth Avenue.

Cablevision Systems Corp. signed a memorandum of understanding to build a new Madison Square Garden one block west, on Ninth Avenue, as part of the James A. Farley Post Office renovation, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

The current Garden atop Penn Station would be demolished to make way for a mixed-use tower and to restore the station to its former glory. Details of the agreement are sketchy, but a source said The Related Cos. brokered the deal by smoothing over hard feelings remaining from the West Side stadium fight between the Bloomberg administration and Cablevision executive James Dolan, the Garden’s chairman.

Related and Vornado Realty Trust are under a state contract to renovate the Farley Post Office. The Garden deal stalled in early January when Cablevision held out for better financial terms, sources said.

It isn't clear whether the Garden will keep a city property tax break that MSG receives at its current site amounting to more than $10 million annually. Former Mayor Ed Koch agreed to the break in order to prevent the Knicks and Rangers from leaving town.

The Garden will take up the western half of the $556 million Farley renovation. The space was originally slated for office and retail development. The eastern half of the project will be redeveloped as the Moynihan Station transit hub. The State Development Corp. says it is moving forward with Moynihan Station and expects a final project design by June.

©2006 Crain Communications Inc.

[johnt_gr]

The current Garden atop Penn Station would be demolished to make way for a mixed-use tower and to restore the station to its former glory. Details of the agreement are sketchy, but a source said The Related Cos. brokered the deal by smoothing over hard feelings remaining from the West Side stadium fight between the Bloomberg administration and Cablevision executive James Dolan, the Garden’s chairman.



So THE ORIGINAL OLD PENN STATION WILL BE REBUILAD AT 7TH AND 34TH??

[alexx02]

Wait. So we are going to have a Penn Station and a Moynihan station facing each other? Isn't that kind of pointless?

[7 World Trade]

this penn station restoration project just gets all the more confusing doesn't it?

i still can't believe that they're gonna jam a stadium into the farley post office building. apparently so far, all this project's gonna do is screw over another building of historical significance in the nyc area. how is this restoring the penn station?

[TalB]

If the Farley Bldg is to be destroyed by a new MSG, then I say leave it where it is to preserve the other half.

[TalB]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/403032p-341374c.html
MSG in tax tussle

Won't move if not exempt

BY LORE CROGHAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

We want our tax break - or we won't go.

That's the word from Madison Square Garden, whose owner is playing hardball - insisting on keeping the famed arena's $11-million-a-year city property tax exemption if it moves a block west into the renovated Farley Post Office, sources said.

But city officials told the Daily News they have no plans to continue the tax breaks if the Garden switches locations.

"Our assumption is that taxes will be paid," Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, Mayor Bloomberg's point man on economic development said.

It would hardly be surprising if City Hall chose to take a hard line with the Garden's owner James Dolan.

Dolan led the successful effort to kill plans for a West Side stadium - one of Bloomberg's top priorities in his first term, and a defeat that still rankles many in City Hall.

Dolan has hashed out a nonbinding agreement with developers Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust to move the arena into the western end of the Farley building, which is being renovated into a $930 million transit hub. Under the plan, the Garden's current home atop Penn Station's platforms would be demolished and replaced by glass and steel skyscrapers.

Related Chairman Stephen Ross defended the tax break - which city officials have criticized in the past - arguing that building the high-rises at the Garden's current site would create new taxes and make up for the lost revenues.

"The Madison Square Garden tax issue is a small component of an overall tax package," Ross said through spokesman Howard Rubenstein. "With the entire project, $75 million in new property taxes would be put on the city tax rolls."

The Garden's tax break will total $11.6 million this year, the Independent Budget Office said.

The Garden's owners would profit from the change of scenery even without the tax breaks, getting about $756 million for the rights to develop the arena's current site, according to a report by stock analyst Christopher Haley of Wachovia Securities.

City officials said they've seen a presentation of the proposed new arena, but have had no direct talks with Garden officials about any move.

Officially, the state agency overseeing the Farley project, which would be renamed Moynihan Station, said it's taking a hands-off approach to the tax issue.

"It is the city's decision as to how to deal with any Madison Square Garden tax exemption," an Empire State Development spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, opponents of the tax exemption are preparing for a fight. City Councilwoman Helen Sears (D-Queens) reintroduced a resolution calling for the state Legislature to end the tax break. A City Council hearing will be held soon.The Garden got its exemption in 1982, when then-owner Gulf & Western threatened to move the Knicks and the Rangers out of the city. So far, it has pocketed $256.2 million, adjusted for inflation, the Independent Budget Office said.

"The taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing Stephon Marbury's salary," said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank.

Still, some observers believe the city will ultimately support continuing the tax break in hopes that moving the arena to Ninth Ave. would trigger the transformation of the West Side.

"The implications for a legacy for Mayor Bloomberg are tremendous," said Jeremy Soffin of the Regional Plan Association.

With David Saltonstall

Originally published on March 26, 2006

[FearOfHeights]

City officials said they've seen a presentation of the proposed new arena, but have had no direct talks with Garden officials about any move.

I'd love to know how detailed the presentation was and if it included any renderings. I have to think the city will continue the tax break, otherwise the Dolans will have little incentive to move.


The following satellite image helps compare the size of the Farley Annex with the current Garden and shows what might be necessary to shoehorn a comparable arena into the existing structure.

Although the current diameter of MSG is larger than either side of the square annex, the new arena will most likely be more oval than round. In fact, the latest renovation of MSG was to have increased the size of many of the concourses simply by restructuring the upper half seats (300s and 400s) to be steeper and more "rink shaped" than circular and bowl shaped.

Assuming the rink orientation of MSG V is kept running east-west (9th Ave to 8th Ave) the new Garden might consume not only the annex but the entire mid-block hall as well, eliminating the possibility of "the chip" being reintroduced into the project and slightly reducing the public common space.


http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e138/FearOfHeights/SateliteMSGFarley.jpg

[ardecila]

Alright, this is kinda pissing me off now. I've been following this project for several years now, and this latest development is the last straw.

First of all, what's wrong with MSG's current location? They receive the tax exemption there, and the city would probably allow them to keep it even if they built a new arena on the same site.

Second, if the city wants office/mixed use development, it should keep it according to the original plan, on the 9th Ave. side of the Farley block. The developers could easily modify the plan to include a respectfully-sized midrise (25-35 stories) built atop the west half of the Farley. There's a similar plan currently in Chicago for Union Station, although IMO the planned tower looks like crap.

Lastly, Penn Station facilities beneath MSG and Penn Plaza should be dramatically reduced in size and scope, serving only to give travellers access to the arena and office tower. The majority of platforms, ticket booths, etc. should be shifted west to better serve Moynihan Station.

One more thing: where will the USPS facilities be relocated to? Obviously postal trucks should not be loading and unloading on 9th Ave. anymore.

[USS Yankee]

They really don't need to build on top of a jewel like the old Farley Building.

[ardecila]

Oh, I'm not recommending it - unless a lot more mixed-use space is needed to offset the loss from MSG's tax exemption. Otherwise, I say leave it. I like things the way they were originally planned.

But given the choice between shoehorning an arena into half of the new Penn Station, possibly losing some of the station's open space and plazas, or building a tastefully-done midrise atop Farley that leaves the station alone - I know what I'd do.

[mr_storms]

a new penn station is really needed imo. The proposals looks nice

[Scruffy88]

what i first understood was the post office was keeping the ninth ave side in operation. if MSG moves in, where is the post office going? are we going to have another central post office built somewhere in the city? A grand one?

[TalB]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/423645p-357520c.html
No more free lunch for Garden deadbeats

There seems to be a real possibility that Cablevision, owner of Madison Square Garden, could move the historic arena a block west as part of a major redevelopment of the neighborhood. So it's worth establishing a ground rule up front: This fat and happy corporate citizen will have to start paying its real estate taxes in full.

Since 1994, when Cablevision purchased the Garden, plus the Knicks and the Rangers, the company has been enriched by roughly $100 million from city coffers. That's because the state Legislature abated the property taxes on the arena way back in 1982, when there was a threat that the teams would bolt from the city. According to the law, the break lasts for as long the teams play in the Garden.

Now, though, Cablevision may have the opportunity to ditch the aging place for a brand-new home that would be installed in the rear of the huge, magnificent and now largely empty General Post Office building that sits across Eighth Ave. Company chiefs Chuck and Jim Dolan will have to swallow hard and start paying the full freight, just like millions of taxpayers large and small.

The Dolans, who have not been particularly altruistic toward the city - it was their multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign that killed the Jets' West Side stadium and New York's Olympic hopes - decline to state their intentions publicly. But officials say the company seems intent on trying to hold onto the tax break. Happily, Mayor Bloomberg seems adamant about ending this gluttony.

The post office building covers an entire block. The half closest to Eighth Ave., with its soaring columns and famous steps, is being refashioned into a new, grand Pennsylvania Station that will serve NJTransit passengers and be named in honor of the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan, who long championed the project. The half closest to Ninth Ave. is slated for an overhaul by a joint venture of real estate developers The Related Cos. and Vornado Realty.

The state is finalizing the plan giving the developers the right to fill the space with retail stores, but shifting the Garden there is on the table, too. Such a move would open the entire block bounded by Seventh and Eighth Aves. and 31st and 33rd Sts. for office and residential construction because Vornado controls a portion of the tract and Cablevision controls the rest. The site, in other words, would be a gold mine. Moving the Garden could unlock as much as hundreds of millions of dollars in land value.

For the Dolans to insist on escaping their fair share of taxes while being so handsomely enriched would be obscene. If they move the Garden, they must lose a break that should have been repealed long, long ago.

[hkskyline]

City-State Battle Looms At New Moynihan Station
Matthew Schuerman
12 June 2006
New York Observer

The plan to turn the Farley Post Office building at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street into a commuter-rail hub named after its early champion, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is turning into a political skirmish pitting Governor George Pataki and his administration against the city.

Charles Gargano, the Governor’s development czar, is anxious to get a spade in the ground on the new Penn Station by the end of the year—and, some say, the end of his boss’ term.

But the Bloomberg administration and city business leaders say it’s worth waiting until two of the city’s largest real-estate developers complete a deal to move Madison Square Garden into a new arena space taking up the western half of the Farley site. That, they say, would leave the current site of Penn Station open for an ambitious redevelopment plan.

Under the $7 billion deal, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust would take the land currently occupied by the Garden and turn it into a new development of office towers that city leaders say would turn the dreary West 30’s neighborhood into the next Rockefeller Center.

About two weeks ago, executives from Related and Vornado began a campaign to convince the city’s political and business elite that the deal is worth waiting for.

They took some plastic and wooden models of the Penn Station area to show off in a series of meetings with City Hall, important business associations and the New York Times editorial board. The different models were meant to show that the plan was very much in its infancy, but participants in those meetings say they showed a new sports arena fitting on the back half of the Farley Post Office, along Ninth Avenue. Three or four high-rise office towers would rise on the Garden’s old site, between Seventh and Eighth avenues. An aboveground Penn Station would stretch for most of the block beneath them. A 200-foot-high glass dome would permit sunlight to reach commuters for the first time in 40 years.

Along with the models, the executives brought some numbers: The whole project represented a $6 billion investment by the developers, which would yield $1 billion in tax revenues for the state and the city.

The lobbying worked. The business groups came out on May 31 strongly in favor of the Garden swap plan at a public hearing before the state economic-development agency.

If the new plan—which would require, among other things, the cooperation of the prickly Dolan clan at Cablevision—delays Mr. Gargano’s plan, it could meet opposition.

“The chairman and I have said it is critically important to start Moynihan Station this year,” said Robin Stout, president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, referring to Mr. Gargano, chairman of the MSDC as well as its parent agency, the Empire State Development Corporation. “I personally have not seen plans for months that are anything more than back-of-the-envelope plans and are obviously quite speculative both in design and financial construct.”

“It has been eight years since everyone stood on steps and said construction will shortly begin. It will be embarrassing to the Governor if nothing actually happens in his term,” said Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society and the most vocal opponent of a Garden swap.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, senior vice president at Related, said that his company would be able to begin work on Moynihan as planned and complete the larger deal before it created any delays. Mr. Barwick scoffed at the suggestion.

“It is like saying, ‘I haven’t decided whether to have a one-bedroom or two-bedroom or five-bedroom house, so I will start with the front door and the hallway and figure out where to put the bath later,’” he said.

Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff was less skeptical.

“I’m not 100 percent sure that you have to hold it up or not, but it is worth exploring,” he told The Observer. “We will have to wait and, over the next few weeks, we should know more.”

Rising Ambitions

Less than a year ago, before this larger scheme came about, refurbishing an old half-used post office into a train hall and leaving Madison Square Garden where it was sounded good enough.

And it was said to be plenty: When Vornado and Related were named last July as the developers who would outfit the station with shops and a hotel, Mayor Bloomberg called it “a gateway to the vibrant new neighborhoods that we are building over the Far West Side” and “a world-class destination.”

That more modest plan to turn the post office into a train hall is 70 percent designed, and within three months of full approval.

But the Vornado-Related team, according to participants in that and other presentations, emphasized that Moynihan would attract just 20 percent of Penn Station’s commuter traffic. (Mr. Stout said that number would increase to 33 percent once the rezoned Hudson Yards area gets developed.)

“I think what is incumbent upon everyone,” Mr. Doctoroff said, “is that while there is an existing plan, albeit in a very preliminary stage, we should stop and think about whether there is not a combined deal that makes more sense and can be done more expeditiously.”

That’s a complex problem. For one thing, Madison Square Garden, which would not comment for this story, says it will not move unless it gets to bring its property-tax exemption to its new location. Mr. Doctoroff has so far refused. (Its primary owners, the Dolans, fiercely opposed his West Side stadium plan last year.)

For another thing, it took about 10 years to cobble together the half-billion dollars in public funding for acquisition and construction of Moynihan Station. The resurrected Penn Station would cost, by one estimate, another billion dollars—and Vornado and Related are not going to pay for all of it.

The catch is that, eventually, certain decisions will have to be made. The larger plan will add about 12 months to the design and review process, along with any time that Related, Vornado, the Dolans and City Hall spend negotiating final details. Will those details be ironed out by the time construction reaches critical junctures?

Under the original plan, the intermodal hall—an area where people could check into their flights and take the train to J.F.K.—would go between the east and west halves of Farley. If the Garden deal comes through, the hall would go on the east side of Eighth Avenue as part of the new Penn Station.

The Dolans are also reportedly insisting that its patrons be allowed to enter from Eighth Avenue, through the train station.

“There is a reality that if you go this route, you would not go as quickly,” said Richard Anderson, the president of the New York Building Congress, which gave measured support for the arena swap at the public hearing. “It will certainly take longer to do. On the other hand, the straightforward Moynihan Station plan has not gotten off the ground.

“If you have the right project,” he said, “sometimes it will take less time than the wrong project, especially if there are powerful economic incentives on all sides. If this is the right project, everyone will rally behind it.”

[TalB]

I would rather they not move MSG, b/c it will just lead to higher ticket prices when we already the price of the some of the events right now.

[Scruffy88]

Even with connections in with Cablevision, I cant get any details. But it is my understanding that the exterior facade will be untouched but the stadium will stick out above the current roof of the west end of the stadium. I don't know if its going to be clad in limestone like the existing facade or if it will be a steel and glass structure reminicent of a mini hearst

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/nyregion/03mbrfs-006.html
East Rutherford: Work Starts on New York-Meadowlands Train Link

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 3, 2006

Construction has begun on a rail line to link the Meadowlands sports complex with Pennsylvania Station in New York, as well as with New Jersey Transit lines around New Jersey. The rail line, about 2.5 miles long, will be capable of transporting 7,000 people per hour to an event. For New Jersey riders, the line will start in Hoboken, stop at the Secaucus Junction station and continue to a station about 100 feet from a new $1 billion stadium in the Meadowlands, which is scheduled to open in 2010. Fans coming from Pennsylvania Station in New York would transfer at Secaucus. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is financing the $150 million rail line expansion, which is scheduled to open in 2008.

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/nyregion/19moynihan.html?_r=1&oref=login
Station Plan Is Called Dead, but It May Just Be Napping

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: October 19, 2006

The Moynihan Station project has had a number of near-death experiences in the 13 years since plans first surfaced to convert the city’s General Post Office into a grand transit center adjoining Pennsylvania Station.

Yesterday, the Pataki administration declared the $900 million project “dead” after Sheldon Silver, the Democratic speaker of the State Assembly, refused to endorse it at a meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board. A yes vote would have cleared the way for construction before Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, leaves office in December.

It was unclear whether yesterday’s event was truly fatal, or merely an attempt by Democrats to deny Mr. Pataki a legacy project. In fact, this project, or even a grander one that includes moving Madison Square Garden, could be revived next year, presumably by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the leading candidate for governor.

But any delay carries political and financial risks. Construction costs could escalate, federal financing could disappear or the project could become mired in lawsuits.

“This project is dead,” Charles A. Gargano, the governor’s top economic development official, said after the meeting. “We’ve got to start all over again.”

Mr. Gargano said that the speaker’s action had forced the state to terminate the deal with the developers selected to build Moynihan Station: Vornado Realty Trust and Related Companies.

State officials and transit advocates have argued that Moynihan Station is desperately needed to relieve overcrowding at Penn Station, the busiest transit center in the country, and to provide a grand gateway to New York City. But Mr. Silver, in alliance with State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and Mr. Spitzer, have repeatedly questioned the financing and legality of the project.

Governor Pataki, who had lobbied personally in its favor, issued a statement last night saying he was “deeply disappointed.” He said that city, state and federal officials had expended a tremendous amount of effort in planning for Moynihan Station, completing the environmental review and designing “a station worthy of Senator Moynihan’s name.”

“It is truly infuriating to now have to consider those efforts fruitless,” Mr. Pataki said.

Mr. Gargano bitterly attacked Mr. Silver, saying he was playing politics and did not understand the project. Officials have suggested that Mr. Silver and other Democrats were acting merely to deny Mr. Pataki any credit.

“He’s one sorry-minded politician,” Mr. Gargano said.

Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, said he was disappointed that the two sides were unable to work out their differences. She said he hoped that the Pataki administration would not restart the bidding process “and foreclose the possibility of the project moving forward.”

Transportation advocates also expressed hope that Moynihan Station would once again survive rumors of its demise.

“I don’t think the project’s dead,” said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association. “But it’s obviously not going anywhere during this administration, which has only 10 weeks to go. I have every reason to believe that this will be a priority for Spitzer, if he’s elected.”

Last night, Mr. Silver denied that he was playing politics. He said that serious questions remained about the financing and the legality of the Moynihan Station project. He said he favored a more comprehensive proposal from the developers to modernize Penn Station on both sides of Eighth Avenue, by demolishing Madison Square Garden and building a new arena within the post office building.

Transit advocates say that the larger proposal is a rare opportunity to overhaul Penn Station, but that it would also be enormously profitable for the developers, who would build a glass canopy over Penn Station, as well as a shopping mall, office towers, a hotel and residential buildings.

But that proposal is still in a nascent stage and has not been publicly unveiled, and has no funding for the estimated $1 billion cost of renovating Penn Station.

Mr. Silver said he offered a compromise yesterday: to approve the $230 million purchase of the post office building and to debate the merits of the proposals in the future. But the Pataki administration rejected the idea.

“There is no reason it shouldn’t be done,” Mr. Silver said of the Farley purchase. “It’s all about photo-ops and cornerstones for them.”

[santobonao]

Why they would call Penn station, Moynihan?

[dynamicdezzy]

Because the senator who championed the idea of turning the post office into a "new Penn" was Patrick Moynihan.

[Metsfan1520]

hold on, i am confused and i am getting a headache from reading this.
let me get this straight:

1-MSG will take up half of the farley P.O.and overwhelm the new station
2-only NJ transit will occupy the new station?
3-LIRR and Amtrack will continue to occupy the old one?

does 2 stations directly across the street from each other make any sense?
does any of this make sense?:nuts:

why can a new MSG be built over the west side rail yards. if not there, can't they find somewhere else besides the farley building? i think the entire farley building be devoted to the station. it should house NJ transit, amtrack and LIRR. the old penn station and the old msg should be demolished as they are ugly and cramped. however, the new msg should NOT occupy ANY of the farley building. that would destroy the whole point of building a new station. msg can find its own site. we should learn from the past and make sure MSG does not destroy any of our beloved train stations!

[Metsfan1520]

can't a new be built over the rail lines between 31 and 33rd streets and between 9th and 10th avenues. this location is compirised of a bunch of exposed rail lines, 2 small parking lots, and an old mediocre office building. it would be easy to build a new MSG over these rail lines.

[TalB]

I find this plan to be uneccesary, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan already has the NYS State Supreme Court of the 1st Dist, at Foley Sq, named after him, so it wouldn't even be the first thing.

http://www.jdclighting.com/Foley%20Square%20Courthouse.jpg

[Metsfan1520]

This project is indeed necessary as the present penn station one of the worst architectural tragedies in new york history. new york is a world class city so it deserves a world class train station. the present plans are terrible. msg should not overshadow the new station. in the picture below i offer an alternative. a new office building could be build on the site of the present msg(blue). The entire farely post office should be devoted to the new train station(green). a new msg should be built over the exposed rail lines and parking lots between 9th and 10th avenue(red). This location would give msg access to the new residential and commercial developments at the west side rail yards(purple). further heightening the appeal of location(red).
http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/9326/penn22ov6.th.jpg (http://img53.imageshack.us/my.php?image=penn22ov6.jpg)


here is a closer look at my proposed site for a new msg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1303/penn1vx0.th.jpg (http://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=penn1vx0.jpg)

[hkskyline]

Plans slowly moving forward for new Penn Station in NYC
19 November 2007

NEW YORK (AP) - Picture Penn Station with a sloping, glass-paneled roof, natural sunlight pouring in and thousands of passengers passing through a huge, majestic concourse just like Grand Central Terminal.

That was 1963, and that Penn Station is gone. The Beaux-Arts landmark was demolished and replaced by the Madison Square Garden sports arena and a dark, underground warren of passages and platforms that make up the nation's busiest train station.

Maura Moynihan, daughter of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, calls it "the pit."

"It is an offense ... not just to transportation, but to good taste generally," she said.

After more than a decade of false starts, a $14 billion plan is moving forward to rebuild the station -- which would be named after Moynihan, a longtime fundraising advocate for a new hub -- and the dingy neighborhood surrounding it.

It hinges on Madison Square Garden agreeing to sell its arena on the spot where the original station stood, and move into an annex in a landmark post office building across the street.

That building, the James A. Farley Post Office, would also house a grand atrium with glass ceilings for more than 550,000 passengers who pass through the station each day -- more people than use all three New York City-area airports put together. More than 5 million square feet of commercial and retail space would be built around it, in a new city business district similar to one that enlivened the area around Grand Central decades earlier.

"That district is the poor stepcousin of Midtown," said Vishaan Chakrabarti, president of the Moynihan Station Venture, the project's developers. "It's really the last area that really hasn't been revitalized."

The venture includes Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust; Vornado owns more than 6 million square feet of commercial space in the neighborhood, as well as a hotel just outside the district that is being pursued as a possible new headquarters for Merrill Lynch. Just west of the train station, billions of dollars in new development is planned along the Hudson River waterfront.

Redeveloping the station and the area around it has been talked about for over a decade, and designs of the main concourse have been revised for the past eight years. The state Empire State Development Corp., under the administration of former Gov. George Pataki, last year failed to win approval of the three-member Public Authorities Control Board to go forward. The board said at the time that the plan needed to be bigger, addressing the needs of the entire train station -- home to Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, Long Island Rail Road trains and half a dozen subway lines.

The agency presented a new version to the public last month, proposing rebuilding the entire station for about $2 billion, moving the Garden to the post office and creating the new business district to spur high-end commercial development.

Negotiations for virtually every aspect of the project are still under way. The Postal Service has sold most of the building to the Empire State Development Corp., although it will still keep a historic, 24-hour lobby with Tiffany's furniture open for business. The developers and the agency are discussing funding for the station; public funding from federal, state and city sources could amount to less than $1 billion, said the agency's downstate chairman, Patrick Foye.

It also needs approval of Amtrak, which owns the station. Spokesman Clifford Cole said Amtrak supports the project but wants assurances that a new station will make more space available for riders, such as waiting areas and better stores and restaurants.

Mostly, it needs the Garden, whose plans have already riled preservationists worried that moving a sports arena into a landmark building would threaten a piece of history in the same way the old Penn Station was destroyed in 1963.

"We don't want history to repeat itself here," said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. "There is no need for the Garden to wreck Farley."

The post office is considered a crown jewel of New York City architecture, with its imposing Corinthian columns and gigantic staircase.

Breen and other preservationists deride reports that owners of the Garden plan to build a glass wall facing the concourse, saying it would overwhelm the train station. They worry that billboards advertising rock concerts and basketball games would be draped over the columns outside the building.

Said Foye: "We are very focused on the preservation issues at Farley ... We have not agreed to a glass wall." He also said billboards would not obstruct the columns and facade on the building's Eighth Avenue exterior.

Garden officials declined comment on their needs for the arena, beyond an earlier statement that they are "continuing to explore all opportunities" in the neighborhood, including moving the Garden.

If the arena does not agree to move, it plans to renovate the existing arena, blocking redevelopment of the train station under the arena.

"I don't want to have to be the person to have to explain to 600,000 passengers ... that they didn't get a new Penn Station because someone objected to a glass wall," said Chakrabarti.

And Maura Moynihan, who belongs to a civic group promoting the project, said her father would approve, despite the many arguments over the design.

"This is a chance that will never come again," she said. "We can't ask for perfection from any project at this late date. We have to move quickly."

[ElCrioyo]

i hate penn station...its so ugly and its crazy that i have to go there every two weeks when i get home from Stony Brook Uni....

It would've been so much better if they kept it like the grand central Station in the other side of manhattan

[TalB]

I find the new stationhouse to be overrated. Also, the General Post Office just got its rennovation on the 8th Ave side finished, so I don't know why they want to ruin that building. I will not argue that building MSG over the original stationhouse was the wrong move, and that it should have been over the Hudson Yds instead, but we cannot change the past. Since most people entering it either via the subway, LIRR, NJ Transit, or even Amtrak will be underground, many of the riders will not even the see the new stationhouse unless they are going out from there. BTW, Daniel Patrick Moynihan does have his name on a building and that is at the NYS Supreme Courthouse over at Foley Sq, and I know this b/c I saw his portrait when I entered inside it for jurry duty and his name is on the entrance at Foley Sq.

[geoking66]

I really can't stand how everyone wants only Penn Station to be utilised. In London and Paris, the multiple-terminus method is much more effective. You'd think with the multitude of lines operating into New York City, there should be one for Amtrak, LIRR, MNRR, NJT, PATH (well two termini because of WTC and 33 Street), and Downtown. An orbital line connecting them would be useful.

[TalB]

Unfortunately, NYC is not like London and Paris when it comes to having a consolidated stationhouse.

[ramvid01]

I really can't stand how everyone wants only Penn Station to be utilised. In London and Paris, the multiple-terminus method is much more effective. You'd think with the multitude of lines operating into New York City, there should be one for Amtrak, LIRR, MNRR, NJT, PATH (well two termini because of WTC and 33 Street), and Downtown. An orbital line connecting them would be useful.

The reason this is not like this in New York is pretty simple. When these original railroads were built some of the railways did not have the money to build a tunnel and buy land for a terminus in Manhattan. Only two were built on Manhattan (Penn Station and Grand Central), while one was built on the New Jersey side of the Hudson and another is in Queens.

[Don Omar]

a breaking news! alert from the Friends of Moynihan Station.

Port Authority to manage the Moynihan Station project with Chris Ward as its director

The New York Observer reports that Governor Paterson is "fed up with the delays" at Moynihan Station and wants to put the project back on track by making the Port Authority the lead agency on the project, instead of the Empire State Development Corporation. In addition, the Governor is expected to announce this afternoon that Chris Ward, managing director of the General Contractors Association and a co-chair of the Friends of Moynihan Station, will be appointed Port Authority Director.

Overall this is good news for Moynihan Station. A move to the Port Authority, especially with Ward at its head, will infuse the project with new leadership and funding. (An ESDC Chair to replace Pat Foye, who resigned last month, still has not been announced.) There is legitimate concern, however, that the Port in the past has sometimes operated too secretively; the Friends will work with the agency and make sure it is held accountable.


Juliette D. Michaelson
Senior Planner, Regional Plan Association
212 253 2727 x312, jmichaelson@rpa.org

[storms991]

Knock down MSG and rebuild the old station I say!

[Dale]

Is this thing going anywhere ?

[Dale]

Any news at all ?