Waiting for Albany to deliver on the new Moynihan Station
By Randi Cecchine
The Moynihan Station project, a grand initiative to expand Penn Station into the James A. Farley Post Office and create a new gateway to New York City, has become a site of recent political dispute. The project seems to be on hiatus, but most parties involved are confident that the new year and a new administration will get the ball rolling.
The Oct. 18 vote by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s representative on the three-member Public Authorities Control Board halted the current plan. Silver’s vote, through his representative, infuriated Governor George Pataki and Charles Gargano, chairperson of the Empire State Development Corporation, the entity responsible for arranging financing for the estimated $900 million project. Pataki issued a public statement charging, “Speaker Silver has single-handily prevented the most important civic and transportation project in the nation today from proceeding.”
Silver’s press officer, Skip Carrier, responded that the proposal had “significant transportation and financing issues.” He added, “We are hopeful that under the leadership of a new administration this long-awaited project will move forward next year. Having a modern, safe, efficient transportation facility is critical to the future of the city and the state. We’ve got to get it done.”
There has been speculation that Silver is delaying giving approval to the project because he is waiting for the Republican Pataki to leave office at the end of the year; Silver could then score points by moving forward on the project with fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who holds a wide lead in the polls in the gubernatorial race.
The project is named for late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed a new Penn Station. The original building was constructed between 1905 and 1910 by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White as a sister structure to the Farley Post Office.
Chelsea resident and retired architect Herb Levine reflected the anger and sadness many people express about the old station’s 1964 demolition.
“It was criminal to tear down one of the most important pieces of significant architecture done at the turn of the century,” he said.
Another local resident, artist Dianne Deneroff, reverently remembers the former train station.
“It was always religious, more than church, because of the quality of light and space,” she said. “The enclosed space was voluminous and very powerful to a kid. When I was in there, I felt awed more than in any space I’ve ever visited. I went nuts when they tore it down.”
On Tuesday, Robin Moore, a visitor from Wyoming entered the city through the current Penn Station, the thoroughly undistinguished subterranean transit hub beneath Madison Square Garden. She was grabbing a bite to eat in Red Cat, a nearby restaurant on 10th Ave.
Asked her thoughts on the current station as an entry portal to New York, she commented, “It is an interesting first impression of New York. When I rolled in it was like we were in a war zone, it was so dark and worn. You emerge into a 1960s world, monochromatic, fluorescent.”
The loss of the original Penn Station and the unpleasant experience of its current incarnation motivates many organizations to be active in the Moynihan plan. The Municipal Art Society has been involved in the plan since its inception. After failing to stop the old Penn Station’s demolition, they helped birth the historic preservation movement and became a lead organization to put landmarks law into practice. They helped design the new train station scenario with Moynihan himself.
“This is a perfect opportunity to come back and advocate for Penn Station,” said Kimberly Miller, M.A.S. director of planning. “The demolition happened several years before
I was born and it is amazing that people have kept on a whole lifetime missing it, yearning for it.”
Friends of Moynihan Station, a coalition led by Moynihan’s daughter Maura, has created a document entitled “Rebirth of a Gateway: Moynihan Station,” in which the goals of the project are outlined. It is an impressive vision that addresses the desire to restore the grandeur of the lost Penn Station while addressing the significant overcrowding of America’s most heavily trafficked transportation center. With an estimated 550,000 passengers using Penn Station daily, it has more visitors than all three regional airports combined and more visitors daily than there are residents of Wyoming. The plan proposes a “spacious new Intermodal Hall under an elegant glass ceiling” and includes space for restaurants, retail stores, a boutique hotel and meeting rooms.
In the document, Ms. Moynihan writes, “This final, unfinished piece of my father’s legacy unites landmark preservation, infrastructure, urban planning, transportation policy, architecture, design and economic development in service to the common good.” The document credits the “blight” of the surrounding area to the destruction of the original Penn Station and proposes that the new station will “catalyze development of Manhattan’s Far West Side, allowing homes and businesses to rise in neighborhoods that have suffered decades of neglect.”
But the proposal has recently become more complicated. The Regional Plan Association, a think tank on planning and development issues in the tristate area, is a leader in the project. Jeremy Soffin, R.P.A. vice president of public affairs, said there are, in fact, two plans on the table.
“Plan A is on the books, with the train station in the eastern portion of Farley with the back end being used presumably for retail,” he explained. “Plan B is a more ambitious proposal, which includes reclaiming the current Penn Station site and moving Madison Square Garden to the back of the Farley building, paving the way for a Penn Station/Moynihan Station complex on both sides of Eighth Ave.
“The opportunity is tremendous and once in a generation,” Soffin continued. “People now realize the importance of sustainability and of getting people off the road and onto public transport. This is an opportunity to unlock the whole area. A lot of neighborhood property holders are waiting for this to fix properties. It is exactly what is needed to catalyze the growth of the Far West Side, pushing the center of activity a block west, moving development along the 33rd/34th St. corridor.”
The simpler of the two projects — Plan A, with just the train station — is tentatively slated for completion in 2010, assuming it starts soon.
With the team of Related Companies and Vornado poised to develop the project while owning a majority of the surrounding real estate, how will community interest and investment be incorporated into the plan? Bob Benfatto, district manager of Community Board 4, says the board has requested that the Empire State Development Corporation form a citizens advisory committee that would involve the local community in the process.
Local videographer Geo Gellar concurs with that idea, urging the need to “have a dialogue between all the stakeholders, to have this project offer a space where the lively local community can contribute to a creative and imaginative future.”
