We know they resort to the ad hominem because their posture is indefensible.Ĭoncerning cost, on the transit side, there is at least $8 billion of waste in their proposal. And they tell us we should all be grateful or be called “NIMBYs” if we object. Adding insult to injury, they want our great station to remain a subterranean affair, a glorified subway stop-with all the charm of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Instead, they are proposing a mass transit paradigm that might have made sense in 1950 but no longer does. Our leaders seem blithely unaware that we have within our grasp a once-in-a-century opportunity to create a transit hub worthy of New York, which many of us still think of as “the greatest city on Earth.” They should be implementing a unified regional transit plan, reforming the tracks at Penn Station to accommodate it, giving the city a great aboveground station to complement Grand Central and the Moynihan Train Hall across the street. In return, New Yorkers, thanks to the ESD and the governor, will get an uninspired, abjectly mediocre Penn Station and vicinity that will hurt the city, the state, and the region, when what they need is a shot in the arm. This plan is a blown opportunity for the ages. What remains of the Penn District, if anything, will be turned over to the Vornado Realty Trust on financial terms highly favorable to the firm. They have as much right to live and flourish in this city as do developers. Our people, our small businesses and our historic structures deserve better.
Such a neighborhood “replacement” scheme was odd and aberrant before COVID-19 it is even more so now. John the Baptist Church and the original Penn Station Service Center would all be removed under the ESD and governor’s plan. The neighborhood’s only fault is is that it is not “Park Avenue.” Thousands of residents, small businesses, Capuchin Friars and irreplaceable architecture will be cast to the winds so that a plethora of supertall Class A office towers can be erected around Penn Station like a noose around the neighborhood. Empire State Development (ESD) claims this will fulfill its unilaterally derived aspirations of having Class A office towers from river to river, even though monolithic business districts following this model fail wherever they’re tried.Īrtist rendering by Patricia Melvin The Hotel Pennsylvania, Stewart Hotel, 7 Penn Plaza, St. Read The Opposing View: The Penn Station Plan is a Job Well Done. Leroy Comrie, New York State’s Public Authorities Control Board and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli did their parts this week and did not let this fatally flawed proposal take wing. The goal ostensibly is to fund unspecified improvements to Penn Station itself, including its expansion underground from West 31st and 30th streets.įortunately, State Sen. It seems clear they want to demolish the block between West 31st and 30th streets and Seventh and Eighth avenues, among many other sites, so that Vornado Realty Trust can build a redwood forest of supertall towers. Kathy Hochul prevail in their ill-conceived plans to revamp Penn Station and vicinity. Add your voice today!Ī vibrant New York neighborhood is a terrible thing to waste, which is precisely what would happen if the Empire State Development Corporation (ESD) and Gov.
Kathy Hochul’s Office The LIRR entrance at Penn StationĬityViews are readers’ opinions, not those of City Limits.
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