Moynihan Station

The list of mayors, governors and U.S. senators who have championed and supported the plans to expand Pennsylvania Station across the street into the Farley Post Office is a lengthy one. Daniel Moynihan, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Schumer, Eliot Spitzer.

The project, now named Moynihan Station, has existed on paper since the early 1990s, gradually morphing from one enthusiastic administration to the next as it has consistently eluded execution. 

Now Governor David Paterson, whose administration has generally been defined by cuts and parsimony amid anemic revenues, wants his own turn with the project, and last week he pledged to succeed where prior governors have failed.  read more »

Much of Governor Paterson's approach over the last few months has been characterized by telling New Yorkers what they will not have under a Paterson administration. There will not be flush state coffers (and there will be cuts); there will not be a finished World Trade Center by 2012; there will not be enough money to fund an M.T.A. capital plan. Money is short, campaign promises were none, so cutting back has become issue No. 1.

But today, invoking the success of projects built during the Great Depression such as the Lincoln Tunnel and much of the New York City subway system, Mr.  read more »

The planned redevelopment and expansion of Penn Station, a top priority of the Spitzer administration, needs to include transportation improvements in order to be a "favorable investment" of the state's resources, Governor Paterson said today.

"What is essential to Moynihan Station is that it be a viable transportation hub," he said, speaking at a Crain's New York breakfast this morning. "If it doesn't include the transportation, its value diminishes considerably as far as I'm concerned."

The remarks suggest yet another turn in the project's long history, with yet another desire to expand its scope. The project, named Moynihan Station in honor of the late senator who championed it, has sat on the drawing boards since at least the early 1990s,  read more »

Governor Paterson said today that his administration has asked the developers of the planned redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station to come back with a new plan, showing the first public sign of life in the project in months.

In a Q&A on WCBS radio, Mr. Paterson was asked about the status of the long-delayed project, known as Moynihan Station.

"We have asked the developers of the potential Moynihan Station to come back to us with another plan that particularly features the subject we've been talking about today--transportation," Mr. Paterson said. "Already we have addressed with them the dwindling supply of revenues that we as the state can put into the plan, and we're expecting an answer form them within a week or two.  read more »

The Related Companies has boosted the title (and workload, presumably) of Vishaan Chakrabarti, project manager for the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust on Moynihan Station.

Mr. Chakrabarti, formerly a senior vice president, has been named Executive Vice President of Design and Planning. He will continue to lead the Moynihan Station effort, according to a Related spokeswoman.

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In case there was any doubt, Steve Roth and Steve Ross really want Madison Square Garden to move.

This morning, some 13 weeks after Madison Square Garden announced it was renovating and staying in place (i.e. not moving), the developer duo professed, once again, their eagerness to see the Paterson administration pick up the ball and move forward with the large-scale Moynihan Station plan. The plan, in its most recent iteration, would involve the state using Port Authority money intended for regional transportation projects to buy the Garden and its air rights from the Dolan family—that is, if they’re willing to sell (the Dolans have expressed no interest and are moving forward with the renovation).  read more »

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed a bill that would authorize billions in federal spending on Amtrak, boosting opportunities for high-speed rail and other programs in the Northeast and around the country.

The bill, which would allow more than $14 billion in spending, could also provide some money for Moynihan Station as part of a $2.5 billion grant program, according to Representative Jerry Nadler’s office, which has been active in pushing the bill. It also contains a provision that would have Amtrak take proposals to build a higher-speed rail link between Washington, D.C., and New York City, looking to reduce the trip to two hours; however, such a proposal would likely cost billions.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth told investors Tuesday that he wants to redo Penn Station in a scaled-back version of the grand Moynihan Station plan, moving Madison Square Garden’s WaMu theater out of the arena structure to make way for a large train station entrance hall.

Despite a push by Vornado and co-developer Related Companies to keep the larger-scale project alive via government support, Mr. Roth indicated he considers that scenario unlikely.

“[We] basically feel that something good is going to happen,” he said. “Either that the governments are going to get their acts together, which they probably will not, or ... we have with Madison Square Garden a Plan B, which is they stay where they are, we take out the theater, we—underneath the seating bowl of the arena—put a new grand entrance to Eighth Avenue and a new grand entrance to the station on Seventh Avenue, and what that will do is create a grand train station. Not quite as grand as moving it, but pretty nice. Actually, spectacularly nice.”  read more »

When Madison Square Garden unceremoniously announced on March 27, via late-afternoon calls to reporters, that it was moving forward on a renovation of its arena, it seemed to be the death blow to the planned redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station and the surrounding area. The Garden, led by chairman James Dolan, was exhausted with the lack of progress in a slow-moving, state-led plan to remake and expand the station, to be called Moynihan Station, which required the Garden’s moving to a new arena in the neighboring Farley Post Office.  read more »

The video above, courtesy of The Observer's Azi Paybarah, features City Council Speaker Christine Quinn expounding this morning on major development projects like the Javits Center expansion and renovation; the stalled Moynihan Station plan; and the Related Companies' West Side rail yards plans.

"I really see all three of them as critically important," Ms. Quinn said. Of Related's rail yards plan specifically: "Now, yesterday, we had a terrific step forward...  read more »

Two of the city’s greatest public-private projects on Manhattan’s West Side have suffered setbacks in recent weeks. First, various government entities have hinting that Moynihan Station—a $900 million project that ballooned into a $14 billion mega-development—will never see the light of day. Then, a deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a real estate developer to create office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the rail yards on the far West Side collapsed.  read more »

No one ever said planning for a train station was cheap.

In a recent filing with the SEC, Vornado Realty Trust wrote off $23 million associated with the “abandonment” of the so-called Moynihan East portion of the Penn Station redevelopment plan.

Taken with planning for the expansion of the station into the Farley Post Office across the street, Vornado, led by Steve Roth, has spent $34.2 million, according to the filing:

The three months ended March 31, 2008 includes a $34,200,000 write-off for our share of two joint ventures’ pre-development costs, of which $23,000,000 represents our 50% share of costs in connection with the abandonment of the “arena move”/Moynihan East portions of the Farley project.

Given that Vornado is in a 50/50 partnership with the Related Companies for the project, the numbers reported by Vornado suggest that the two companies have spent nearly $70 million on the project since they were designated developers in 2005!  read more »

At a press conference earlier today, Michael Bloomberg pushed back against Chuck Schumer’s suggestion that building Moynihan Station should take precedence over developing the West Side rail yards.
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Mayor Bloomberg pushed back against a pet initiative of Senator Schumer's today, saying the city “would never agree” to the Port Authority taking over the troubled Moynihan Station project.

Since March, Senator Schumer has been an outspoken proponent of moving the project under the purview of the Port Authority, saying the bi-state agency has the experience and the capability to complete the long-stalled project. Governor Paterson has supported the idea and said the move is likely, though some legislators are against it.

This morning Mr. Schumer tried to push the idea further, saying at a Crain’s New York breakfast that the state’s development agency, which currently has authority over the project, “is not capable of being a major development agency here.”

Shortly after, responding to questions from reporters, Mayor Bloomberg said, effectively, thanks but no thanks.  read more »

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 »

Governor David Paterson said today that he will likely move Moynihan Station under the purview of the Port Authority, dropping the imbroglio on the plate of soon-to-be-announced executive director Christopher Ward.

From The Observer’s Em Whitney:

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.

 read more »

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly, and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.”  read more »

Developers Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies are grasping for options to keep alive a multibillion dollar redo of Penn Station and related real estate development, as they have asked the city and state to back a loan to build a new Madison Square Garden in the Farley Post Office across Eight Avenue.

The proposal is intended to lure the Garden back to the table, as the company, led by Chairman James Dolan, pulled out of the larger plan in March. The state is considering the offer as one of many options for the project, a state official confirmed.

In this option, the state and city could be saddled with the cost of the arena—said to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion—should the larger redo of Penn Station ultimately fall apart.  read more »

An addendum to our article earlier this week on the never-ending Moynihan Station saga: The concept of converting the Farley Post Office into a rail station is widely viewed as belonging to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, its most persistent advocate from the early 1990s until his death in 2003. But the history goes back a bit further, and started as a partnership between the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak, both of which stood to gain from a redevelopment of Farley.

Two of the major forces behind the plan's genesis: Donald Pross, who served as Amtrak’s director of real estate and development until 1995, and Dennis Wamsley, who ran the Postal Service’s asset management division.

Amtrak, eager to have a more presentable flagship station, was looking at options of how to improve Penn Station in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Mr. Pross.

Around the same time, a postal service executive was heading up a program known as asset management for the agency, finding ways to take existing properties, add other uses, and bring in some new money.  read more »

Sometime around late 1991, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan caught wind of a plan being studied by Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service to expand Pennsylvania Station into the neighboring Farley Post Office. The two agencies envisioned an expanded rail station with a sense of grandeur, as Penn Station’s train platforms ran under the column-lined post office.

New York’s senior senator, a Manhattan native, was sold on the concept almost immediately; he placed the estimated $315 million project at the top of his agenda. From then until his death, in 2003, he became the project’s biggest advocate as he pieced together the support of local politicians, fought for funding in Congress, and brought in President Clinton for the push. Now, still just a concept, the plan bears his name.  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 »

So just how earnest is the Dolan family in its pledge to keep Madison Square Garden in its place, and abandon a possible move essential to the current Moynihan Station project?  read more »

News yesterday that Madison Square Garden's owner, the Dolan family, will renovate instead of moving across the street to the Farley Post Office seemed to doom the planned Moynihan Station, but the head of the project said today he thinks the family's decision "isn't irrevocable."

"We just need a lot of strong public leadership to get to the point where, you know, [the Dolans] see the project as a potential reality," Vishaan Chakrabarti, president of the Moynihan Station Venture (a team of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust) said at a real estate luncheon today. The $14 billion Moynihan project would create a new transit hub to replace the aging Pennsylvania Station.  read more »

Madison Square Garden said on Thursday it is planning to move forward with a renovation of its existing facility, a move that, if realized, would kill the $14 billion plans for a remade and expanded Penn Station with surrounding commercial development. City officials and the private developers behind it, however, hold out hope that the project can still move forward.

“Madison Square Garden has decided to move forward with our renovation, previously announced in 2004. After exploring several alternatives, it has become clear that the only viable option is a renovation,” a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, Barry Watkins, said in a statement.

The Garden’s announcement comes as the state recently lost the two top people leading the project: Governor Spitzer and his deputy for development, Patrick Foye. Governor Paterson expressed support for the project, but has seemed rather preoccupied with hammering out a budget by March 31.  read more »

As part of the plans for a reconstruction and expansion of Pennsylvania Station, known as Moynihan Station, the city is seeking ways to create an expansive pedestrian network of tunnels and walkways in the area around the transit hub.  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 »

As optimism about the Moynihan Station project morphs into uncertainty, Governor Spitzer, the man at the helm of the endeavor, faces a crucial test in coming weeks, as he turns with an open hat to City Hall and Washington for nearly $1 billion in funding.

The grand plan, which would allow for $14 billion in total investment and would include a redeveloped and expanded Penn Station and a move of Madison Square Garden to the neighboring Farley Post Office, seems on the edge of collapse, many involved say.  read more »

Developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust have been pouring money into the proposed redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station as part of the grand Moynihan Station project, spending tens of millions of dollars so far in the project’s planning.  read more »

The Observer's Eliot Brown broke the news on Friday that the Dolans may balk at moving Madison Square Garden a block west, a necessary component of the grand Moynihan Station plan. The Times' Charles Bagli on Saturday reported on the general problems now threatening the entire plan, including a softening real estate economy.

Crain's now reports that a failed Moynihan Station plan could mightily impact Steve Roth's Vornado Realty Trust. The publicly traded landlord is one of two developers--Stephen Ross' Related Companies is the other--working with the state and other entities, including the Dolan family, on the project.  read more »

Things don’t seem to be all that peachy these days in the planning process for a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of Penn Station, to be known as Moynihan Station.

The plan for the project hinges on the Dolan family’s Madison Square Garden moving to the back of the neighboring Farley Post Office building, clearing the way to redo Penn Station, along with adding a concourse in the Farley building.

Though, in recent weeks, advocates, community members and others involved with the process have expressed increasing concern that the Garden could throw a wrench in the whole process, frustrated by the slow-moving bureaucracy and the intransigence of preservationists who are concerned about major alterations to the historic Farley building.  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 »

The state economic development agency and the private developers behind Moynihan Station have targeted an unlikely pot of money to help build the proposed $3 billion transit center in midtown west: homeland security dollars.

“This is a logical place for people to invest homeland dollars,” said James Dyer, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who is representing Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies, the two firms that formed a joint venture to redevelop the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. “Anytime you have a station carrying more people through it that go through the airports at any one time, you obviously are going to have security concerns.”

The developers paid Mr. Dyer’s firm, Clark & Weinstock, $220,000 in the first half of the year to lobby the Department of Homeland Security as well as other more obvious targets, such as Amtrak and the Department of Transportation, according to federal lobbying records.  read more »

After putting in an information request to the state a couple of months back, we just received a copy of the daily schedules from April through October for Pat Foye, downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that oversees such mega-projects as Atlantic Yards, the redevelopment of Penn Station, and the (possible) expansion of the Javits Center.

A few things that caught our attention:

Mr. Foye seemed to have more meetings about Moynihan Station than about any other project. That included at least four meetings that devoted time to “Farley’s windows,” presumably referring to the old post office stamp booths in the Farley Post Office that preservationists want to see maintained partially for that use. In a daylong trip to Washington, D.C., Mr. Foye met with a Deputy Postmaster General at the U.S. Postal Service.

More after the jump.  read more »

One of the ongoing points of contention between civic organizations and the developers of the planned Moynihan Station complex is whether Madison Square Garden should be allowed to advertise on the Beaux-Arts façade of the Farley Post Office, which would serve as the Eighth Avenue entrance to the new arena. Today, a coalition of 17 organizations and elected officials, under the auspices of Friends of Moynihan Station, softened the hard-line preservationist approach.

The statement of principles (PDF) reads: “A limited amount of advertising as long as it is tastefully designed and managed, as it is in Grand Central.”

The Friends’ Web site actually shows a variety of advertising, including the banners in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Asked whether the banners should be allowed, Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, said, “The principle is that we are standing in front of a landmark here and the landmark has to be respected. Can there be some temporary signage for special events? Perhaps that’s going to be acceptable.”

Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which has taken a harder line on preserving the exterior but has nonetheless signed onto the design principles announced today, said, “The Garden is going to have opportunities, as I understand it, with kiosks at the corners, mid-block and Ninth Avenue corners. Everyone is going to know where Madison Square Garden is. We want people to know there is a Post Office and great train station inside.”

Is everyone clear on this?

After years of delays, an ambitious state plan to turn the old Farley Post Office into a gleaming new transit hub is finally coming together. Could a ragtag gang of computer hackers now gum up the works again?  read more »

The late senator’s daughter finds herself caught between developers and preservationists on massive Moynihan Station project.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust stands to win very big if the current plans for Moynihan Station go through. As the Municipal Art Society puts it on a Web site dedicated to the plans: Vornado "will dominate one district like no other landlord in the city."

Vornado, based in Paramus, NJ, and one of the biggest publicly traded landlords in the nation, already owns about 7 million square feet of commercial space between 31st Street and 34th Street west of Broadway.

Under the plans released yesterday by the Empire State Development Corporation, Vornado and its development partner on Moynihan Station, The Related Companies, could get to build over 7 million square feet of commercial and/or mixed-use space, including buildings to rival the Empire State Building in size (though probably not surpass it).

Also, Vornado owns the Hotel Pennsylvania across the street from the current Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. The landlord has long talked about tearing down the hotel and building a gigantic office tower in its place. (Press reports have put the tower's size at no less than 2 million square feet; the Empire State Building is about 2.8 million.)

For perspective, consider this: The World Trade Center site office dev