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."
