Moynihan Station project laid bare at scope hearing

Volume 2, Number 10 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | December 14 - 20, 2007

"Support businesses and organizations that support Chelsea Now"

By Chris Lombardi

The new “Extended Moynihan Project” was laid bare at a scoping hearing last Thursday at the James A. Farley Building, eliciting both praise and concern from local legislators and advocates while representatives for the project’s developers listened in.

Close to 150 people filed into the hearing room on the fourth floor of the James A. Farley Building, in the same section of that sprawling structure earmarked for the new plan from Moynihan Ventures, the joint Related Companies-Vornado partnership chosen by the Empire State Development Corporation to execute the project.

The attendees included representatives of Comcast, Inc., which owns Madison Square Garden, which has so far not agreed to move the venue to the west end of the Farley Building, as the project plan conditions.

Peter Stout from ESDC first introduced the scope, with photos and maps the plans to demolish and relocate MSG and build a new station. Then the team rolled out the two scenarios envisioned for use of the project’s associated development rights: Option One (the Penn Station Super-Block, which would consolidate all 12 million square feet of development rights on one block next to the station) and Option Two, a “development sub-district” from 28th to 35th Streets, as far west as 10th Avenue and as far east as Fifth Avenue.

Then it was time for Friends of Moynihan Station founder Maura Moynihan, who first mourned the old Pennsylvania Station: “When I walk through the current Penn Station, I can’t stand it,” she said. “But we can redeem it as something new and something better. The old station died when the car triumphed over rail. Let’s see the train triumph over the car!” Moynihan ended with a cri de coeur: “We don’t have much time left, before the effects of global warming to become impossible to deal with—about 10 years, they say. Well, it’ll take 10 to 15 years for this station to be built. So, let’s hear the jackhammers soon!”

Moynihan’s vision was quickly endorsed by other members of her coalition, which aligns local elected officials with groups as varied as the New York Building Congress and the Municipal Art Society. The latter’s Judith Saltzmanm cautioned that the grand structure must follow in the footsteps of Grand Central Station: “Maintain ownership of Moynihan Station in public hands,” she implored.

Few who testified had much objection to the grand new station, though State Senator Thomas Duane, like many others, objected strenuously to plans to relocate Farley’s postal operations to the already stressed Morgan Annex. Others said that without specific drawings or maps, the whole thing was hard to visualize—“Where are the exits?” “Will those two extra floors in Farley really be contextual?” And no discussion of the new station was complete without some mentioning New Jersey Transit’s equally vast ARC (Access to the Region’s Core) project, which calls for an entirely new deep-cavern station underneath Macy’s.

“This [Pennsylvania] station should not primarily be a concourse for shopping, with station access as an afterthought,” said Geoge Haikalis of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, which has long opposed the ARC project. “The project should not preclude the opportunity for bringing trains using the new Hudson River tunnel directly onto existing platforms and tracks at Penn Station, and continuing to a new tunnel directly to Grand Central Station.”

Far more dissent was expressed about the proposed “Moynihan Station Sub-District” from 28th to 34th Streets and from Ninth to Fifth Avenues. Judith Saltzman stressed the need to preserve the many historic buildings in the area—as many as 94, according to Columbia University, including Farley—and urged the city to proactively seek federal Historic Preservation Tax Credits for them.

Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, calling the sub-district “development on steroids,” rattled off a long list of concerns, including pedestrian congestion: “It is mind-boggling to think of what the sidewalks in the area will be like with 7.5 million square feet of new development.” Local community boards expressed frustration with the subdistrict’s lack of consideration for local zoning codes. Even the New York Building Congress, which welcomed the jobs such development will create, still cautioned against “heedless development.”

Throughout, Related, Vornado and Comcast remained quiet, not asking to speak. Then, after about an hour of testimony, Dan Biederman of the 34th Street Partnership stepped to the podium. Though his group, the local business improvement district (BID), is actually a member of the Friends of Moynihan Station, he said he had some differences with “many of the preservation and planning groups” in FMS. “This project presents a wonderful development opportunity,” said Biederman, who is widely credited with helping Grand Central Station’s recovery in the 1980s.

Biederman, who in the past 20 years has also become known for making the BID the primary engine of urban renaissance, used the FMS Statement of Principles as a sort of anti-agenda for his statement. Keep the project in public hands? Nonsense, said Biederman: Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, “the best project of this type, is privately owned.” Make sure buildings don’t dwarf the surrounding blocks? “If there’s going to be great bulk added to New York’s fabric, where else?” As for favoring independent businesses over chain stores in the station’s retail complex, Biederman scoffed. “In our experience,” said the man whose BID awarded whole blocks of 34th Street to the European clothing giant H&M, “the better presenters tend to be national brands.”

Most problematic to the other FMS members was his Partnership’s opposition to pursuing federal historic preservation tax credits. “The delays introduced by State Historic Preservation Officers often delay important projects that shouldn’t be delayed,” he said, “and insert an architectural view that is not a popular one.”

FMS’ Juliette Michaelson told Chelsea Now recently that the group valued Biederman’s perspective, “which is so different from what we think about,” but that she was confident that as the process moves forward into the many more stages of public review stages, “we’ll find a compromise we can all live with.”

Meanwhile, City Hall was already beginning to weigh in, quietly. Danielle Decerbo, land-use advisor for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, told Chelsea Now that the Speaker had “multiple concerns” about the sub-district: “We agree that it can’t be located on top of the station, but we have concerns. First, anything past Eighth Avenue doesn’t make sense. You’d jam right into the Hudson Yards rezoning, which took a long time to work out. Second, the district in their scoping document cuts right into to the Garment District, but we want to protect the thriving businesses that are already there.”

But at this early stage, the hearing was regarded by many as simply an overture. CB 4 District Manager Robert Benfatto wondered recently what MSG owner Comcast had thought about it all, but cautioned that the plan, in a very real sense, does not yet exist.

“We’ll see how it all comes out,” said Benfatto. “Who knows? When they tell us what they want, it might not be as bad as people fear. Sometimes people create controversy where there is none.”