Moynihan Station

Two of the city’s greatest public-private projects on Manhattan’s West Side have suffered setbacks in recent weeks. First, various government entities have hinting that Moynihan Station—a $900 million project that ballooned into a $14 billion mega-development—will never see the light of day. Then, a deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a real estate developer to create office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the rail yards on the far West Side collapsed.  read more »

No one ever said planning for a train station was cheap.

In a recent filing with the SEC, Vornado Realty Trust wrote off $23 million associated with the “abandonment” of the so-called Moynihan East portion of the Penn Station redevelopment plan.

Taken with planning for the expansion of the station into the Farley Post Office across the street, Vornado, led by Steve Roth, has spent $34.2 million, according to the filing:

The three months ended March 31, 2008 includes a $34,200,000 write-off for our share of two joint ventures’ pre-development costs, of which $23,000,000 represents our 50% share of costs in connection with the abandonment of the “arena move”/Moynihan East portions of the Farley project.

Given that Vornado is in a 50/50 partnership with the Related Companies for the project, the numbers reported by Vornado suggest that the two companies have spent nearly $70 million on the project since they were designated developers in 2005!  read more »

At a press conference earlier today, Michael Bloomberg pushed back against Chuck Schumer’s suggestion that building Moynihan Station should take precedence over developing the West Side rail yards.
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Mayor Bloomberg pushed back against a pet initiative of Senator Schumer's today, saying the city “would never agree” to the Port Authority taking over the troubled Moynihan Station project.

Since March, Senator Schumer has been an outspoken proponent of moving the project under the purview of the Port Authority, saying the bi-state agency has the experience and the capability to complete the long-stalled project. Governor Paterson has supported the idea and said the move is likely, though some legislators are against it.

This morning Mr. Schumer tried to push the idea further, saying at a Crain’s New York breakfast that the state’s development agency, which currently has authority over the project, “is not capable of being a major development agency here.”

Shortly after, responding to questions from reporters, Mayor Bloomberg said, effectively, thanks but no thanks.  read more »

Should Governor Paterson indeed move the Moynihan Station project under the control of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as he said he wants to do, at least two members of the State Assembly are poised to resist the action: Richard Gottfried, the district’s representative, and Richard Brodsky, the chairman of the committee that oversees public authorities.

“It’s a New York project; it ought to be run by a New York agency,” Mr. Brodsky said. “As a bi-state authority, they [the Port Authority] have been unresponsive, remote and immune to reform.”

Moving Moynihan from the state-controlled Empire State Development Corporation to the Port Authority would remove the Legislature from any direct control over the project, taking away its ability to pass laws about the plan or have approval power via the Public Authorities Control Board. (The PACB blocked the project from moving forward in a phased plan at the end of the Pataki administration.)  read more »

Governor David Paterson said today that he will likely move Moynihan Station under the purview of the Port Authority, dropping the imbroglio on the plate of soon-to-be-announced executive director Christopher Ward.

From The Observer’s Em Whitney:

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.

 read more »

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly, and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.”  read more »

Developers Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies are grasping for options to keep alive a multibillion dollar redo of Penn Station and related real estate development, as they have asked the city and state to back a loan to build a new Madison Square Garden in the Farley Post Office across Eight Avenue.

The proposal is intended to lure the Garden back to the table, as the company, led by Chairman James Dolan, pulled out of the larger plan in March. The state is considering the offer as one of many options for the project, a state official confirmed.

In this option, the state and city could be saddled with the cost of the arena—said to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion—should the larger redo of Penn Station ultimately fall apart.  read more »

An addendum to our article earlier this week on the never-ending Moynihan Station saga: The concept of converting the Farley Post Office into a rail station is widely viewed as belonging to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, its most persistent advocate from the early 1990s until his death in 2003. But the history goes back a bit further, and started as a partnership between the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak, both of which stood to gain from a redevelopment of Farley.

Two of the major forces behind the plan's genesis: Donald Pross, who served as Amtrak’s director of real estate and development until 1995, and Dennis Wamsley, who ran the Postal Service’s asset management division.

Amtrak, eager to have a more presentable flagship station, was looking at options of how to improve Penn Station in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Mr. Pross.

Around the same time, a postal service executive was heading up a program known as asset management for the agency, finding ways to take existing properties, add other uses, and bring in some new money.  read more »

Sometime around late 1991, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan caught wind of a plan being studied by Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service to expand Pennsylvania Station into the neighboring Farley Post Office. The two agencies envisioned an expanded rail station with a sense of grandeur, as Penn Station’s train platforms ran under the column-lined post office.

New York’s senior senator, a Manhattan native, was sold on the concept almost immediately; he placed the estimated $315 million project at the top of his agenda. From then until his death, in 2003, he became the project’s biggest advocate as he pieced together the support of local politicians, fought for funding in Congress, and brought in President Clinton for the push. Now, still just a concept, the plan bears his name.  read more »

With the plans for a grand redo of Pennsylvania Station looking all but dead following Madison Square Garden’s announcement that it will renovate its existing arena rather than move to a new site, one of the developers central to the project has indicated his approval for a scaled-back version if the larger plan indeed fails.

“I am hopeful a scaled-back version and perhaps even a doubly scaled-back version will happen,” Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth wrote in a letter to investors that appeared in SEC filings yesterday. “In my view, there has been too much public endorsement of the idea of this project for nothing to happen.”  read more »

Madison Square Garden today unveiled plans for a $500 million interior renovation of its arena that would remake and reconfigure lobbies, concourses, seating and concessions in the four-decade-old building. Should the project go forward, it would bring an end to the plans to remake Penn Station, a $14 billion initiative of transportation and commercial development in the area that hinges on the Garden moving its arena.

“You saw the plans, you see the model—we can accomplish everything that anybody could possibly want in a new arena by renovating,” Hank Ratner, vice chairman at Madison Square Garden, told reporters this afternoon. “We are not going to be moving.”  read more »

So just how earnest is the Dolan family in its pledge to keep Madison Square Garden in its place, and abandon a possible move essential to the current Moynihan Station project?  read more »

News yesterday that Madison Square Garden's owner, the Dolan family, will renovate instead of moving across the street to the Farley Post Office seemed to doom the planned Moynihan Station, but the head of the project said today he thinks the family's decision "isn't irrevocable."

"We just need a lot of strong public leadership to get to the point where, you know, [the Dolans] see the project as a potential reality," Vishaan Chakrabarti, president of the Moynihan Station Venture (a team of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust) said at a real estate luncheon today. The $14 billion Moynihan project would create a new transit hub to replace the aging Pennsylvania Station.  read more »

Madison Square Garden said on Thursday it is planning to move forward with a renovation of its existing facility, a move that, if realized, would kill the $14 billion plans for a remade and expanded Penn Station with surrounding commercial development. City officials and the private developers behind it, however, hold out hope that the project can still move forward.

“Madison Square Garden has decided to move forward with our renovation, previously announced in 2004. After exploring several alternatives, it has become clear that the only viable option is a renovation,” a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, Barry Watkins, said in a statement.

The Garden’s announcement comes as the state recently lost the two top people leading the project: Governor Spitzer and his deputy for development, Patrick Foye. Governor Paterson expressed support for the project, but has seemed rather preoccupied with hammering out a budget by March 31.  read more »

As part of the plans for a reconstruction and expansion of Pennsylvania Station, known as Moynihan Station, the city is seeking ways to create an expansive pedestrian network of tunnels and walkways in the area around the transit hub.  read more »

At the center of recent concern—voiced by advocates, officials and others involved with the process—surrounding the viability of the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station is where all the money will come from to fund it. [More on the broader issue here.]

State officials have said the redevelopment of Penn Station, part of a grander project known as Moynihan Station, will cost at least $2.2 billion (with emphasis on “at least”), and there’s a whole lot more funding that needs to be secured.

And while the state and other officials deny the plan is falling apart, expressing optimism, we thought a recap of the various funding commitments and potential sources was in order:  read more »

Don’t know how we missed this. Apparently, for the first time, the state displayed this rendering of the larger Moynihan Station last week, as part of a talk Governor Spitzer gave at the Association for a Better New York breakfast.

The governor is at a critical stage with the Moynihan plan, seeking a big, big chunk of money from Washington, along with more from the city. More on all of that in this week’s paper.  read more »

As optimism about the Moynihan Station project morphs into uncertainty, Governor Spitzer, the man at the helm of the endeavor, faces a crucial test in coming weeks, as he turns with an open hat to City Hall and Washington for nearly $1 billion in funding.

The grand plan, which would allow for $14 billion in total investment and would include a redeveloped and expanded Penn Station and a move of Madison Square Garden to the neighboring Farley Post Office, seems on the edge of collapse, many involved say.  read more »

Developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust have been pouring money into the proposed redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station as part of the grand Moynihan Station project, spending tens of millions of dollars so far in the project’s planning.  read more »

The Observer's Eliot Brown broke the news on Friday that the Dolans may balk at moving Madison Square Garden a block west, a necessary component of the grand Moynihan Station plan. The Times' Charles Bagli on Saturday reported on the general problems now threatening the entire plan, including a softening real estate economy.

Crain's now reports that a failed Moynihan Station plan could mightily impact Steve Roth's Vornado Realty Trust. The publicly traded landlord is one of two developers--Stephen Ross' Related Companies is the other--working with the state and other entities, including the Dolan family, on the project.  read more »

Things don’t seem to be all that peachy these days in the planning process for a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of Penn Station, to be known as Moynihan Station.

The plan for the project hinges on the Dolan family’s Madison Square Garden moving to the back of the neighboring Farley Post Office building, clearing the way to redo Penn Station, along with adding a concourse in the Farley building.

Though, in recent weeks, advocates, community members and others involved with the process have expressed increasing concern that the Garden could throw a wrench in the whole process, frustrated by the slow-moving bureaucracy and the intransigence of preservationists who are concerned about major alterations to the historic Farley building.  read more »

In a morning sure to be rife with Jim Dolan-bashing, the City Council is holding a hearing Monday on a Madison Square Garden tax break, as elected officials are calling for an end to the approximately $11 million-a-year property tax exemption. The movement to revoke the break is gaining steam at the same time that Mr. Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden and a true darling of the media, is in negotiations to move across the street into the Farley Post Office as part of a complex redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station.  read more »

The state economic development agency and the private developers behind Moynihan Station have targeted an unlikely pot of money to help build the proposed $3 billion transit center in midtown west: homeland security dollars.

“This is a logical place for people to invest homeland dollars,” said James Dyer, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who is representing Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies, the two firms that formed a joint venture to redevelop the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. “Anytime you have a station carrying more people through it that go through the airports at any one time, you obviously are going to have security concerns.”

The developers paid Mr. Dyer’s firm, Clark & Weinstock, $220,000 in the first half of the year to lobby the Department of Homeland Security as well as other more obvious targets, such as Amtrak and the Department of Transportation, according to federal lobbying records.  read more »

After putting in an information request to the state a couple of months back, we just received a copy of the daily schedules from April through October for Pat Foye, downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that oversees such mega-projects as Atlantic Yards, the redevelopment of Penn Station, and the (possible) expansion of the Javits Center.

A few things that caught our attention:

Mr. Foye seemed to have more meetings about Moynihan Station than about any other project. That included at least four meetings that devoted time to “Farley’s windows,” presumably referring to the old post office stamp booths in the Farley Post Office that preservationists want to see maintained partially for that use. In a daylong trip to Washington, D.C., Mr. Foye met with a Deputy Postmaster General at the U.S. Postal Service.

More after the jump.  read more »

One of the ongoing points of contention between civic organizations and the developers of the planned Moynihan Station complex is whether Madison Square Garden should be allowed to advertise on the Beaux-Arts façade of the Farley Post Office, which would serve as the Eighth Avenue entrance to the new arena. Today, a coalition of 17 organizations and elected officials, under the auspices of Friends of Moynihan Station, softened the hard-line preservationist approach.

The statement of principles (PDF) reads: “A limited amount of advertising as long as it is tastefully designed and managed, as it is in Grand Central.”

The Friends’ Web site actually shows a variety of advertising, including the banners in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Asked whether the banners should be allowed, Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, said, “The principle is that we are standing in front of a landmark here and the landmark has to be respected. Can there be some temporary signage for special events? Perhaps that’s going to be acceptable.”

Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which has taken a harder line on preserving the exterior but has nonetheless signed onto the design principles announced today, said, “The Garden is going to have opportunities, as I understand it, with kiosks at the corners, mid-block and Ninth Avenue corners. Everyone is going to know where Madison Square Garden is. We want people to know there is a Post Office and great train station inside.”

Is everyone clear on this?

After years of delays, an ambitious state plan to turn the old Farley Post Office into a gleaming new transit hub is finally coming together. Could a ragtag gang of computer hackers now gum up the works again?  read more »

The late senator’s daughter finds herself caught between developers and preservationists on massive Moynihan Station project.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust stands to win very big if the current plans for Moynihan Station go through. As the Municipal Art Society puts it on a Web site dedicated to the plans: Vornado "will dominate one district like no other landlord in the city."

Vornado, based in Paramus, NJ, and one of the biggest publicly traded landlords in the nation, already owns about 7 million square feet of commercial space between 31st Street and 34th Street west of Broadway.

Under the plans released yesterday by the Empire State Development Corporation, Vornado and its development partner on Moynihan Station, The Related Companies, could get to build over 7 million square feet of commercial and/or mixed-use space, including buildings to rival the Empire State Building in size (though probably not surpass it).

Also, Vornado owns the Hotel Pennsylvania across the street from the current Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. The landlord has long talked about tearing down the hotel and building a gigantic office tower in its place. (Press reports have put the tower's size at no less than 2 million square feet; the Empire State Building is about 2.8 million.)

For perspective, consider this: The World Trade Center site office development--which is spread among different developers, like Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority--should create about 10 million square feet of new office space. Vornado could end up building or helping build nearly the same amount in a roughly 15-block area--where it already owns about 7 million feet.

Vornado properties in the area include the 2.58 million-square-foot One Penn Plaza and the 1.1 million-square-foot 11 Penn Plaza.

There are some 4.5 million square feet of development rights hanging around the Madison Square Garden superblock in the West 30s that would be freed up if the arena makes way for a gigantic Moynihan-Penn train station. Rather than putting two office towers there, each larger than the Time-Life building, the Empire State Development Corporation favors “sprinkling” those air rights around to other neighboring properties.

“It will mean less disruption to commuters, fewer financial risks, and it will tie the development around Moynihan Station to the demands of the market,” Patrick Foye, ESDC’s downstate chairman, said at a luncheon today before the New York Building Congress.

Mr. Foye, who is in charge of making a deal with Vornado Realty Trust and its partner, The Related Companies, for the project, said both the dispersed and the concentrated versions would be put forth in planning documents that will be released by the end of this year. (The New York Times reported in July that it would be done that month; Mr. Foye told The Observer in August he expected it finished in October.)

Asked after the event, Vishaan Chakrabarti, the project manager for the Vornado-Related partnership, would not comment, but Mr. Foye said the developers were on board. (It turns out Vornado controls much of the property on and around the superblock anyway.) Where the city, which would have to redo the zoning nearby, stands is less clear.

While the players in the proposed Moynihan Station get entangled with one another (wasn’t there supposed to be a plan out there by now?), the Municipal Art Society is hitting them from the outside.  read more »

Location: You have a number of publicly funded—or at least very public—projects: the Fre  read more »

The state economic development agency is paving the way to get a hold of the Farley Post Office as soon as next month, a crucial part of the Spitzer administration's new strategy for building a new Moynihan Station and revamping Pennsylvania Station.

Shortly after coming into office in January, Pat Foye, the new downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, extended the option to buy Farley, but just until the end of March--an optimistic target, it seemed at the time, for wrapping up a huge real-estate deal that would have involved moving Madison Square Garden a block west, to the back end of Farley, opening up Penn Station to the sky, and erecting huge office towers around its edges on the Eighth Avenue superblock where the Garden now sits.

But it is increasingly clear that Mr. Foye will not wait until that superdeal gets worked out before buying the post office. And having control of some of the property involved would put the state in a better position to negotiate with the private developers who own Penn Station's air rights over who will pay how much to redo the station.

At a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, the ESDC board agreed to seek a bridge loan or an advance from the developers that would give the agency the few million dollars it would need to close the post-office deal next month. After the meeting, Robin Stout, the president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, a subsidiary of ESDC, told reporters that the agency could purchase the post office before wrapping up the larger negotiations. Neither he nor Mr. Foye would say, however, when that would happen.

"A closing date has not been scheduled but we are committed to moving forward as quickly as we can," Mr. Foye said.

A public hearing on the loan comes March 12. The state Public Authorities Control Board could then approve the general project plan--the same one, it turns out, as was rejected last October--before the end of the month, when the option expires.

Will Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver veto it this time around?

- Matthew Schuerman

The Spitzers administration's keen interest in moving Madison Square Garden (a not-very-well-kept secret) came out into the open on Thursday morning.

The board of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state economic development agency, allocated $500,000 for a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Moynihan Station project that would consider the implications--in terms of traffic, historic preservation and whatnot--of moving the basketball arena from its present home at 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue a block west, where the Farley Post Office Annex now resides.

A bigger, better Pennsylvania Station (along with a whole mess of skyscrapers) would rise in the Garden's current location and the front end of the post office would be turned into more train station.

Once the "scoping document" comes out in the next two or three months, we will learn more about what the Garden and the private developers behind the move, Vornado Realty Trust and The Related Companies, want to do back there. It will be another two or three months for a draft general project plan, and then another two or three (or more) months before reaching the final approval stage that the old Moynihan Station plan had reached last October, when it was unceremoniously dumped by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

"There are two fundamental issues on Moynihan that are threshold issues. One is the transportation issues," ESDC Downstate Chairman Patrick Foye told reporters after the meeting. "The second fundamental issue relates to ... how any overages are treated. The state and ESDC are not willing to sign on to unlimited liability and are going to be looking for participation, probably from the state and the city, and from the project developers as well."

- Matthew Schuerman

On Election Day last November, Vishaan Chakrabarti, the name and face of the private developers that  read more »

Hip Clothier Sheds Threads, Declares Art for Art's Sake "The last time local clothier Brooklyn Industries tried to make an ambitious artistic statement in its storefronts, the effort only inspired area graffiti artists. Now, one year (and thousands of dollars in property damage) later, the small-but-expanding chain's owners have come back with a plan to look a lot less like sell-outs: In one location, they're not planning on selling anything--except their image." Go to Counter Espionage by Chris Shott. Daily News Hub Sells for $700 Million "Now, Mort Zuckerman will have to write his monthly rent checks to a rival. The home of Mr. Zuckerman's prized asset, the Daily News, is in contract for more than $700 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal." New York Life Building Fills with Tenants "The New York Life Building is not having any trouble finding tenants. And, unlike so many of its iconic peers, it's not turning residential, either. Totally the opposite: The building is now fully leased, after filling 300,000 available square feet in the last 18 months." Go to Commercial Breaks by John Koblin. Spitzer Aide as Transit Savior: Arise Again, Moynihan Station! "Just a matter of hours after Gov. Spitzer won [in November], Patrick Foye, not even announced as chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, began to chart the course of an entirely new office district with a double-headed train station. Since then, Mr. Foye and others who work for him have been moving forward quickly to get Moynihan Station back on track after its demise in the final months of the Pataki administration, expanding the scope of any project to include the so-called Plan B, which would involve a new Penn Station as well." Go to story by Matthew Schuerman. It's a Long, Long Sales Haul for Manhattan Condos "At the dawn of 2000, when the idea that the average sales price for a Manhattan apartment could top a million dollars was but a glimmer in the eyes of brokers, it took 118 days, on average, to unload a condo. Not anymore. According to appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which prepares a quarterly market report for brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman, by the start of 2007, the average number of days it took to sell a condo shot up more than 60 percent from barely two years earlier." Go to The Lab by Tom Acitelli. Wendy Wasserstein's Garret Windows Go for $5.22 M. "It's been one year since the playwright Wendy Wasserstein died at the age of 55, and her old apartment, on the 11th floor of 75 Central Park West, has now been sold for $5.22 million." Did Lehman Estate Get Close to $32 M. at 2 East 67th? "Back in 1978, after the death of her colossal art collector husband Robert Lehman, Lee Anz Lehman bought herself the ninth floor of 2 East 67th Street. The queenly apartment will soon change hands after nearly 30 years: according to the Corcoran Web site, where the apartment was listed for $32 million, her estate has now signed a contract to sell the co-op." Go to Manhattan Transfers by Max Abelson.

• Brooklyn affordable housing complex sells for $18.3M.
[GlobeSt]
• City welcomes 44 million visitors this year.
[NY Times]
• Gargano tries to salvage Moynihan Station project.
[NY Post]
• Coney Island eatery could become luxury housing.
[NY Post]
• Housing slump may hurt holiday retail sales.
[NY Post]
• Big Manhattan home deals dot 2006.
[NY Post]
• Pet palaces emerge in city's luxury condos.
[NY Post]
• Jamaica mixed-use project set to begin next year.
[Daily News]
• City Council gets behind stricter bar, club regulations.
[NY Sun]
• City land prices likely to drop in 2007.
[NY Sun]
• A Harlem church's development arm helps seniors.
[Journal]

Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

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• It's not news that Soho is over the hip hill. But who knew that "by a ratio of 5:1, shoppers said they would come to Prince Street more often if they had more space to walk"? Attention shoppers, if any more of you come to Prince, the neighborhood will turn into one big expensive spice-rack. [Streetsblog]
• Christie's is holding its biggest-ever sale of "20th century decorative art and design." If you have $20 million, get yourself a merry little chandelier, paperweight, light fixture, or rare Favrile glass mosaic panel. [Interior Design]
• Even though the $900 million plan for Moynihan Station didn't make it past the Public Authorities Control Board in October, the excitingly-titled PACB will be reexamining the deal on Dec. 20. (They'll also likely be passing judgement on Atlantic Yards then, too.) Christmastime is always so exciting! [City Limits]
• The median rent for New York City apartments rocketed 21 percent from 2002 to 2005, which means "low-income renters have little cash remaining at the end of the month after struggling to pay rent, and must forgo other basic necessities." [Multi-Housing News]
- Max Abelson
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Charles Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, is sometimes portrayed as a developer's best friend, but Wednesday morning, in his first extensive comments after the failure of Moynihan Station (and mixed in with much less passionate words about Atlantic Yards), he spat out the word "developer" like it was an unripe persimmon. He also didn't seem to care for Shelly Silver too much.

Here are his choice words:

"The notion that we presented a project that the developers didn't want to build -- who's in charge here, the developers or the public sector? We are in charge and we put a project out in RFP [request for proposals], and we got responses to the RFP that what we presented to the [Public Authorities Control Board]. We did not present a project that included a six to eight order of magnitude larger than the project that was put out in the RFP."

And later:

"The comments that were made by [state Assembly] Speaker Silver were, 'This is not the project the developers want to build.' What does that mean? What the hell does that mean? We put out an RFP. The next thing is, 'Well, we'd like to see the whole project.' Well, we did present the whole project, the Moynihan Station project. So there is no really sound reason not to approve this project. It was just a lot of talk in my opinion to reject the project for personal reasons -- whatever, Madison Square Garden. I don't know what it might be, but we do know, and all of you in the media do know, some of the associations with Madison Square Garden and Speaker Silver."  read more »

Gargano wouldn't say whether the state would pay another $10 million to extend the option to buy the Farley Post Office from the feds -- a step that would be required to keep the Moynihan Station project alive. He didn't say the project was dead, either, though he did say that the incoming Spitzer administration would need to "revive" it, and wished them well.

- Matthew Schuerman