Pennsylvania Station

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »