Private company announces competitive vision for Penn Station redesign
A private development company with an alternative vision for recreating Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station said Wednesday that its plan would be significantly less expensive than a rival proposal backed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
ASTM North America’s new plan includes renovating Penn Station, the busiest rail hub in the United States, and encasing Madison Square Garden in a towering stone facade. The unveiling came days after New York Governor Kathy Hochul signaled that the state was ready to move forward with a renovation.
ASTM officials said during a presentation on Tuesday that the company’s plan was better than the one supported by the MTA because it would be $1 billion cheaper and result in a more unified train concourse.
The announcement would likely spark a conflict between ASTM and the MTA, whose chief, Janno Lieber, said in April that the plan was wastefulpartly because it involved paying the owners of Madison Square Garden, which sits atop the station, a hefty fee to demolish part of the complex.
Although Amtrak owns the building, the decision on which redesign plan to follow was expected to be made jointly by the railroad and the states of New York and New Jersey, which control the MTA and New Jersey Transit.
Civic leaders have been advocating for a new Penn Station since the 1990s, when former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan proposed converting the old James A. Farley Post Office building across Eighth Avenue into a train concourse. That idea became a reality under former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, but it has done little to ease the crowded and gloomy conditions at Penn Station itself. Attempts to renovate the train interchange have been hampered by the presence of an arena on it, and officials have argued for the Garden’s relocation for years, to no avail.
While other plans to renovate Penn Station have been proposed and then rejected over the years, several city and state officials and leaders of influential non-profit organizations have expressed support for ASTM’s proposal. The bulk of any renovation would be funded by state and federal tax dollars.
Responding to the MTA’s criticism, Peter Cipriano, the senior vice president of ASTM North America, said during a presentation on Tuesday that his company’s proposal would be cheaper and that there was a clear plan to pay for it.
“They have more than $7 billion, and where the money for that is coming from is completely unclear,” he said, referring to cost estimates for the MTA plan, which are as high as $10 billion.
The ASTM proposal includes the purchase and demolition of the theater in MSG, a 15,000-square-foot site on the west side of the entertainment complex, to make way for two new light-filled train concourses: a grand entrance on Eighth Avenue with 55- foot ceilings and a 105-foot atrium in the center of the block where trucks are currently unloading equipment. The renovation would ease access to all 21 tracks, reduce congestion and allow for additional track capacity in later upgrades. Construction could be completed in six years, the company said.
ASTM would pour $1 billion to jump-start the project and rely on a mix of state and federal funding to cover the balance. The company would then manage and operate the station for 50 years, while the three railroad companies using the space — Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the MTA — would pay a total of about $250 million a year for the privilege. Any construction cost overruns would be borne by the private company.
The cost to buy the theater from MSG would be less than $500 million, Mr. Cipriano said. In the ASTM plan, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which is run by billionaire James Dolan, would also pay to renovate the garden’s signature drum.
The plan was unveiled in March. The design team, led by PAU and HOK, the architectural firm that co-designed La Guardia Airport’s acclaimed Terminal B, has since made several changes.
Gone is the glassy box that would have surrounded MSG, replaced by a contemporary Neoclassical dais of limestone or granite, with lines echoing the Corinthian columns of the Beaux-Arts Farley Building across the street.
Demolition of the theater would not only create space for a dramatic new entrance, but also free up space for an alternative truck loading scheme that is critical to traffic flow, said Vishaan Chakrabarti, PAU’s creative director.
“This cannot be dismissed as cosmetic,” he said.
The MTA plan would accomplish many of the same goals, with the exception of a new Eighth Avenue entrance, which the agency has called unnecessarily expensive because the majority of passengers use the Seventh Avenue entrance. The MTA has estimated that the total cost of building the Eighth Avenue train concourse would be $1.5 billion to $2 billion.
The ASTM plan is less expensive in part because the design would not remove a critical structural bridge between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The removal could add more than $1 billion to construction costs, Mr Chakrabarti said.
Jamie Torres-Springer, the president of MTA construction and development, said rebuilding the mid-block bridge was important to the agency’s plan.
ASTM also worked closely with engineering firms familiar with the intricacies of the garden. Mr Torres-Springer said the MTA was not interested in paying for technical details it already had.
“It’s very funny – every proposal, big or small, from ASTM has to pay MSG money,” said Mr. Torres-Springer.
On Monday, Ms. Hochul officially jettisoned a plan that had called for the construction of 10 skyscrapers near the existing Penn Station to help fund a new train interchange. She announced the start of a preliminary design process that is expected to culminate in the state issuing a contract for completion of the project.
The timing of her announcement didn’t seem coincidental: It came just days before ASTM was expected to reveal the financial details of its own plan.
The decision to proceed without the tower component came as no surprise. The 10-tower plan, which Ms. Hochul inherited from Mr. Cuomo, involved developing millions of square feet of office space at a time when the commercial market is collapsing and borrowing costs are high. Vornado Realty Trust, the developer that would build those skyscrapers, put its plans on hold in February.
Ms. Hochul said she was “open-minded about all possible scenarios,” which seemed to create an opening for ASTM. She made the announcement while standing next to Manhattan borough president Mark Levine effectively endorsed the ASTM plan, and Anthony Coscia, the Amtrak president, whose railroad is open to the idea. An Amtrak spokesperson declined to comment on this story.
But the ASTM plan is roundly opposed by Mr. Lieber, the president of the MTA, who is angry at the idea of a private company interfering in a lawsuit he was leading.
He and his team have pointed to the station’s new Long Island Rail Road corridor as evidence of the MTA’s ability to competently oversee major projects, and he has objected to the idea of making Madison Square Garden Entertainment to pay to acquire the theater from MSG.
Madison Square Garden Entertainment has indicated that it is open to the ASTM plan. It seems less open to the MTA’s proposal.
During a recent hearing on the Garden’s bid to extend the stadium’s operating license in perpetuity, an MSG representative dismissed the MTA’s plan as “a concept piece” that “doesn’t work from a technical perspective.”