Reply With QuoteI know it's a key component to unlock the Penn site, but they should not have first dibs on where they put a new giant hockey puck! Why is there a monopoly on arenas in Manhattan; a West Side Stadium would have fixed that problem....hmmmmm
^Adding to that----> this was discussed before. If only the Post office is converted into (Moynihan Station) a modern day terminal and nothing else, then the only ones to reap the benefit are commuters from NJ. Nj transit would be the anchor tenant....the only tenant to use Moynihan. Amtrak and LIRR would still use the current Penn. And while I'm not hating on NJ but investing all of that $$$ on only a single rail provider would suck for everyone else. (Look at Fulton st station vs WTC hub) However, by moving MSG from its current site else where (lets ignore the fact that the proposal is over half of Farley for a second) then a new Penn gets to be erected over the current one and the chance for HUGE (i know, i know) towers to be built opens up as well. That means more money for the city. Of course there are at least 3 big issues. 1) Subsidies, 2) tax breaks and 3) New MSG. Who should pay for the new Penn station? Should the city hand out 1 to 2 billion (tax-payer) dollars for this new station or the developers who are going to make a lot more than that because of this development? Should the city let the Dolan’s keep their tax breaks if they move else where? Should they build the New MSG over part of the Farley building? And of course that last one brings many smaller issues, like 1) design, 2) signage, 3) entrances, 4) ticket windows, etc. If the MSG design doesn't swallow the new Moynihan station then it might be worth sacrificing part of the building. You would have 2 (above ground) structures serving the current station, Office development and a brand new Arena - It’s definitely worth it. But of course, we have to wait for the renderings to be "officially" released.
I know it's a key component to unlock the Penn site, but they should not have first dibs on where they put a new giant hockey puck! Why is there a monopoly on arenas in Manhattan; a West Side Stadium would have fixed that problem....hmmmmm
Why is it that the old Penn took up the entire superblock, and we're having trouble dedicating a small portion of the property to the station? Rail and Pedestrian congestion means bigger station. Why have we taken a step backwards since 1911, in terms of transportation?
I think that after 1945 the main idea was a personal car -- not public transportation. Now once we have oil problems, traffic without end, road repairs which cost a fortune and there are never enough of them and on top global warming -- the new outlook is actually went back to 100 years old wisdom of having trains, trams an etc. So what was considered obsolete in 1964 when Penn station was demolished, now is back in favor. Hopefully to stay.Originally Posted by jarod213
Because they won't move MSG far from the hub. If you try to force them to move it elsewhere, they'll stay put. End of project.
What do you mean?
NY Times
July 15, 2007
Sports of The Times
With the Dolans Involved, Expect More Ugliness
Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux-Arts building, was torn down in 1963 to make room for the current Madison Square Garden. Plans for a new train station may have to make way for a proposed new Garden.
By GEORGE VECSEY
Just wonderful. Now it turns out that the friendly folks from Madison Square Garden, who have enough trouble qualifying the Knicks and the Rangers among the top 16 teams in their leagues, are glomming in on the dream for a new Pennsylvania Station.
That is all we need. I’ve been waiting four decades for New York to atone for the sin of destroying the beautiful Beaux-Arts train station, and now we learn that the proposed station may have to share space with the cable guys.
The way I read it, a proposed new Garden would sprout like some mutant fungus from the west side of the handsome James A. Farley Post Office, where the new train station was supposed to dwell in spacious grandeur.
The worst part seems to be that the Cablevision folks who own the Garden also want to dominate the east facade of the old post office, with ticket booths and gaudy advertisements of the horrors of the Dolan stewardship.
Instead of inviting travelers into the mystery and romance of rail travel — or at least the prosaic suburban lines — the blighted exterior would urge sports fans to visit the latest and always-suspect version of the Knicks and the Rangers. This is progress?
•
The proposed next Garden would be part of a rebuilding of the West Side of Manhattan around 34th Street, a very big real estate deal indeed. My main concern, as it was in the mercifully defeated plan to build an impractical Olympic complex in Manhattan, is that public officials do not cave in to the demands of wealthy sports proprietors. Take it from a sports columnist: Sports aren’t all that important in the overall scheme.
New York deserves a second landmark train station to go with the gilded, renovated Grand Central Terminal on the East Side. A spacious new terminal should aim to match the escalators that climb toward the shimmering open-air heavens in the magnificent station in Kyoto, Japan, or the awesome panorama of platforms and shops in European stations like Zurich and Leipzig and Milan.
Knicks and Rangers fans know the ugliness of a train station buried because of greed. The current Garden squats atop the site of the former Penn Station, once a wondrous airy glass-and-steel haven for travelers that was torn down in 1963 to make money for the proprietors of the failing Pennsylvania Railroad, now tucked into the squalid enterprise known as Amtrak.
Instead of a beautiful train station, New York got itself a dump of a sports arena five awkward stories above the ground. The “new Garden,” as I stubbornly call it, forces every sentient being, from lanky basketball players to sturdy hockey players to ponderous pachyderms to Garden patrons, to funnel into dismal little entrances, corridors, elevators and escalators.
Pardon me for sounding like an old-timer, but the previous Garden, the third one by actual count, induced much more of a sense of community, with its famous marquee (N.Y.U. vs. C.C.N.Y. — ask your grandparents) facing Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. Meet me outside Nedick’s, you would say to a friend, but there is nothing that social at the current architectural blight.
It gets worse underground.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. A latter-day Dante might write these words after descending the lower depths to catch the 5:33 to Hempstead or Rahway. The more favored commuters to Westchester and Connecticut get to use Grand Central, where no basketball or hockey teams abide. Maybe there is a moral to that.
Many Knicks and Rangers fans have suffered from the triple witching hour of a ghastly station, an eyesore and lousy teams, particularly in the past decade. Rangers fans put up with no Stanley Cup playoffs at all from 1998 through 2005, but actually won a playoff series this spring and made some enlightened signings afterward.
Knicks fans have seen exactly one playoff appearance, a quickie sweep by the Nets, in the past six years, and last season even looked like a team sometimes, until David Lee was hurt.
Now the Knicks have brought in Zach Randolph to try to coexist with Eddy Curry near the basket, but at least the Knicks shuffled off Steve Francis, the oldest-looking 30-year-old player I have ever seen.
•
Portland did what Knicks fans demanded for two torturous seasons, buying out Francis’ contract in a heartbeat. For all the shuffling by Isiah Thomas, Knicks fans who renew their season tickets must consider it a mixture of financial speculation, like buying a faltering stock, and an act of faith, like believing in some future lottery nirvana.
There’s not much anybody can do about the incompetence of the Garden management. But Gov. Eliot Spitzer can make a statement early in his term by insisting on the original goal of a world-level train station in the name and vision of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
New Yorkers like to think we deserve the best in everything. We shouldn’t sacrifice or alter the potential glory of a public project for the self-interest of a private enterprise just because of the elusive glitter of two sports franchises.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
How about using Eminent Domain to take from the Dolans control of the Knicks, the Rangers and The Garden?
Surely all are blighted and are in need of resuscitation.
Have not the Dolans shown that they have allowed their holdings to drag down the immediate area?
Trying to get them out of the picture would be interesting, if nothing else.
I mean, the entire Penn Complex took up 2.33 superblocks (the old Penn Station took up an ENTIRE superblock, look at old plans) and today we have issues dedicating even a small portion of that same superblock; how backwards are we????? ahhh!
I don't get it. The old Penn continued to exist with the same footprint but was relocated underground.
It's currently probably the same size as before. The new, expanded Penn will be much bigger.
http://archrecord.construction.com/n...ennStation.asp
SOM, Foster, and KPF to remake Penn Station
July 16, 2007
by Russell Fortmeyer
Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), Foster + Partners, and Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) have been retained as architects for a multi-billion-dollar-project to redevelop New York City’s Pennsylvania Station district, parties close to the deal confirmed on Friday.
Bud Perrone, a spokesperson for the project’s developers, a joint venture of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, acknowledged that the three architecture firms are involved. Another source involved in the design of the project told RECORD that Foster will prepare the master plan for a site that includes the existing Penn Station, Madison Square Garden (MSG), and two office towers, One and Two Penn Plazas. This plan calls for razing MSG and capping the subterranean train station with a large glass dome.
Errol Cockfield, a spokesperson for the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC)—the state agency involved in organizing development between private and public interests—confirmed much of the project’s scope. The redevelopment plans include SOM’s previously announced transformation of the Farley Post Office, which the ESDC purchased in March at the southwest corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue, into a new Moynihan Station that would augment Penn’s existing—and at-capacity—infrastructure. Cockfield says that the low-rise podium of One Penn would likely be razed, but that the tower would remain and that Two Penn would only be re-skinned. (RECORD’s offices happen to be located in Two Penn Plaza.)
Cockfield says that the ESDC has yet to assemble a timetable for making the designs public, or for the phases of development, but he did say that a scoping session would occur before summer’s end. This session will establish the amount of square footage that the development might contain and prepare rudimentary drawings for how it will be divided. “Some of this is still in flux and people want answers and there is frustration in some corners,” Cockfield says. However, other sources tell RECORD that environmental review hearings are expected to begin this fall. A draft Environmental Impact Statement was completed for the Moynihan project in 2006.
The destruction of McKim Mead & White’s original 1910 Penn Station, in 1964, is largely credited with establishing the historic preservation movement in the U.S. Charles Luckman Associates designed the replacement station, MSG, and office complex, but the public has never quite embraced them. Historian Vincent Scully once wrote that in the old Penn Station, “one entered the city like a god,” while in the new subterranean complex “one scuttles in now like a rat.”
In recent years, the site has been the subject of much speculation. A source involved in the design of the redevelopment has told RECORD that Two Penn Plaza would also be razed to allow for wholesale redevelopment of the area. Planned new structures might include 5.5-million-square-feet of retail, restaurant, hotel, and office space designed by SOM.
Additionally, for a site at the corner of 34th Street and 7th Avenue, KPF would design a 2-million-square-foot skyscraper that will be taller than the Empire State Building, located just two blocks away.
SOM’s plan to turn the Farley Post Office building—designed by McKim Mead & White and completed in 1913—into Moynihan Station could act as the front door to a relocated MSG to the west, as well as house retail space that may include a large department store. Cockfield would not confirm whether or not other architects are involved in this project, but he said that Amtrak or New Jersey Transit will likely call Moynihan home. Currently, those two rail services and the Long Island Rail Road jockey for space in overcrowded Penn underneath MSG. Six adjacent subway lines add to the congestion.
David Childs, FAIA, a partner with SOM, says that his firm is mainly focusing on the Moynihan project. “It’s going to be one of those great stories, but if we finish by 2012, we’ll be lucky,” he says. After numerous starts and stops, that project was put on hold in 2006 when state government officials, including assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, withheld approval until a plan for the entire district could be put forward for review.
Perrone, who is with Rubenstein Communications, says that there are on-going discussions between the developers and various state and local agencies, including the ESDC, the City of New York, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the railway services, and the state government.
Separately, plans were announced last winter for the destruction of McKim Mead & White’s 1918 Pennsylvania Hotel, located at the northeast corner of 32nd Street and 7th Avenue, to make room for a hotel tower to be designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates and developed by Vornado.
That building’s demolition will leave only the Farley building as the last vestige of the celebrated architects’ legacy in the Penn Station district.
I asked the question because I wanted to make sure you were referring to the above ground complex.
You have to consider conditions today as compared with 1900.
Unlike today, railroads were at the height of economic power, the premier industry in the US. Real estate was already very expensive in Manhattan, and only a railroad could afford to use 8 acres of prime land for a railroad station.
Even then , PRR president Alexander Cassatt wanted to include commercial space with the station, but architect Charles McKim resisted it.
As the railroad industry went into decline, the unused air-rights over the station became a valuable asset for PRR. That's why the station was dismantled in the first place.
Todays passenger railroads are generally subsidized. If you want to build an 8 acre station, it will have to be completely funded with public money. And it won't add any capacity to the system; in my opinion, that's a waste of money.
You can have a grand station that shares spaces with commercial development
This is with out a doubt the most beautiful photo of the old Penn Station that I have ever seen. The great interior shots are spectacular but to see the building just sitting there in it's element is quite something.
That picture gives me too much pain. Same goes for the framed photos of the old Penn Station that are hung on a few columns in the "new" Penn Station's main concourse. Talk about adding insult to injury reminding commuters that above them use to rise slender beams supporting a fantastic vaulted glass and steel ceiling. Ugh.
PLEASE \/ Yesssss!!!!!
SOM, Foster, and KPF to remake Penn Station
... A source involved in the design of the redevelopment has told RECORD that Two Penn Plaza would also be razedto allow for wholesale redevelopment of the area. Planned new structures might include 5.5-million-square-feet of retail, restaurant, hotel, and office space designed by SOM.
I know the dow jones was pushed to a new record close today, but all this news sounds too far fetched for New York development circles. It even sounds far-fetched for the 1920’s when the market was booming and labor was cheap. If anyone can pull it off it will be the power combo of Vornado-Related, but we're talking billions and billions of dollars here.
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