Give us something better over the courtyard
The glass covering over the interior courtyard could be more interesting. This component does not live up to the vaulted glass space in the original Penn Station.
The simple gable shape lacks imagination. Perhaps something curving or elliptical, with interesting support elements or glass panels that form a pattern somehow-I like the "potatoe chip", though I think it's narrowness prevents it from achieving the drama that could happen over the courtyard.
I don't know, just wondering if anyone else agrees?
I agree the current glass shape isn't that imaginative at all next to the curved mid-section glass, and especially when considering the inevitable comparisons to the old Penn Station glass ceiling. It's a shame to rue a lost opportunity before it's even been built.
up in the air
For the record, the scheme with two towers is (as far as I know) the only residential proposal, the others being 100% office. As for the train station, the gabled glass roof is over the main hall which sort of cascades down to the track level so light will in fact get all the way down there. The big potato chip is what's being called the intermodal hall, and the real function of it is still unclear to me. The nice thing about it is that it fills a void between the two separate structures on the block so that there'll be an enclosed concourse from 8th to 9th avenue. What noone is saying is that the cost of SOM's potato chip is so high that even with the 1M s.f. air rights for the tower and the 1M s.f. of retail it's still hardly worth it for the developers. So whoever wins the project will likely try to value engineer the hell out of it.
May 4, 2005
Moynihan Station Makes Its Big Push With Sangria Kicker
by Terry Golway
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, late a Senator from New York, can still pack them in. He’s been gone for two years now, but on May 2 dozens of New Yorkers—including the woman who holds his old Senate seat—gathered in the James A. Farley Post Office building to pay homage to his last dream.
Were he still among us, the Senator would not be surprised to learn that his notion of turning the Farley building into a new Pennsylvania Station has been more deliberate than speedy. He often despaired of the time and effort it took to complete public-works projects in the New York of his later years. To the argument that completing this project ought to be easy, since the building is there and so are the tracks, he no doubt would have replied: "Ah, but you have not reckoned with the ways and means of Washington and New York in the third century of American independence." Or something like that.
The conversion of the Farley building remains unachieved despite the availability of federal funds. A year or so ago, the Senator’s daughter, Maura Moynihan, founded a group called the Moynihan Station Citizens Group, to help persuade lawmakers that the pit now known as Pennsylvania Station does no justice to the city or to the memory of the landmark that once stood where today rests a tomb called Madison Square Garden.
On May 2, Ms. Moynihan’s efforts to finish her father’s work received a much-needed morale boost when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton headlined a fund-raising event in the old post office. Donors who paid $1,000 a ticket heard Ms. Moynihan tell a story about her father that most newspapers will deem unfit for print—although it was published in all its glory in the staid columns of the Congressional Record.
In 1999, during humdrum hearings held by the Senate Public Works Committee, Senator Moynihan interrupted the then head of Conrail to inquire about the gravesite of the recently deceased Charles Luckman, the architect responsible for what replaced the old Penn Station. Moynihan was told that Luckman had been buried in Richmond, Va.—but why did he wish to know?
"I want to piss on his grave," the Senator said.
In his last years, Moynihan saw in the Farley building that rare chance for civic redemption: an opportunity for the city to reclaim a portion of that which was turned to dust and rubble four decades ago. Everybody (save the current leadership of Amtrak) seemed to agree, but little has been done.
That will change soon, Mr. Bloomberg told the crowd, many of them holding glasses of white sangria mixed with undisclosed "special ingredients" to create a cocktail known as, yes, the "Moynihan Station."
"Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor dark of night" will delay the process any longer, Mr. Bloomberg vowed.
Ms. Moynihan hopes the Mayor is right. But time and inertia are formidable foes.
"We have to hear the sounds of jackhammers in the Farley building soon," she said. "The funds for the station have been sitting around for six years, and the maxim regarding federal funds is ‘Use them or lose them.’"
Senator Schumer, who served with Moynihan in the Senate for two years, said the late Senator was "frustrated" in his later years by "the inability to build on a grand scale" in New York. Sounding much like the man whose course at Harvard he audited as a freshman in 1967, Mr. Schumer condemned what he called a "culture of inertia" in which "critics get undue weight, even if they represent only three people."
He credited the Senator’s daughter with embarking "on a crusade to see that the culture of inertia does not prevail."
But that culture is not unique to New York.
Republicans in Congress—fans of neither public transportation nor the Northeast corridor—have shown a marked disinterest in using the funds that the Senator set aside for the station-conversion project. So Ms. Moynihan hopes that Mayor Bloomberg’s interest in the project may help highway-loving Sun Belt Republicans see the merits of a grand rail station on the West Side of Manhattan.
"We are delighted that the Mayor was here to support this effort," she said. "Let’s face it, if the Mayor’s office wasn’t behind this, it would be a lot more difficult. As my father once said at a contentious hearing about the station, ‘Everybody must hold hands and come together.’"
Such intimacies may come in time. For the moment, getting a few score people in the same room to hear two Democratic Senators and a Republican Mayor reading from the same page is familiar enough.
Even as speeches were read and promises made in the Farley building, across the street the huddled masses of Penn Station—yearning to be free of the station’s low ceilings and regional-airport décor—were filing into the pit. A hub for commuters, Penn Station also is New York’s rail portal to the world beyond the tristate area. Amtrak’s long-distance trains, which once served Grand Central Terminal as well, now run exclusively from the pit. It’s an unsatisfactory point of entry and departure for a city that prides itself as a world capital.
"When was the last time you heard somebody say, ‘Let’s have a drink at Penn Station?’" Ms. Moynihan said.
Well, they said just that on May 2. Perhaps one day the friends of Penn Station will return for a nightcap.
COPYRIGHT © 2005
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
http://www.newyorkmagazine.com/nymet...957/index.html
Train Station Running Late
Making over the Eighth Avenue post office into Moynihan Station should be the easiest of Manhattan’s big projects. So why might it not happen?
By Chris Smith
On September 14, 2001, not long after putting down his ground-zero bullhorn, President George W. Bush had a quieter conversation with Governor George Pataki. The two men were discussing ways to show that New York was undaunted and vital and to give the city’s economy a boost. A public construction project would be ideal. Were there any good ideas, Bush asked, already in the pipeline?
Sure, Pataki said: converting the old Farley post-office building on Eighth Avenue into a new Penn Station. The money was largely in place and everyone was in favor of it, Pataki told the president; the only hurdle was persuading the Postal Service to vacate the historic landmark. “Yes,” Bush answered. “Let’s do it.”
Which made him the second consecutive president to support the plan. Bill Clinton came to the city in May 1999 for a celebratory press conference in which he endorsed spending federal money to make it happen.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has always favored the project. The state’s two current U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, regularly proclaim their love for the station. Heck, the line of elected advocates stretches back nearly uninterrupted all the way to 1993, when the legendary Daniel Patrick Moynihan began maneuvering money for the project into a series of federal appropriations for what, after his death, has come to be called Moynihan Station.
But walk over to Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street and up those grand marble steps. You can buy stamps from a couple of lonely mail clerks. In December, the worthy “Operation Santa Claus” sets up shop in an alcove off the lobby. Otherwise the building’s 1.4 million square feet are occupied by pigeons and wishful thinking. Across the street, below Madison Square Garden, 550,000 passengers a day continue to sweat, swear, and collide as they try to escape the depressing maze that is Penn Station.
Moynihan Station is the middle child of New York City development projects. Ground zero, which will always claim the greatest emotional attachment, is the firstborn. The West Side stadium, which can do no wrong in the eyes of its indulgent parents, is the favored baby of the family. Moynihan Station—earnestly playing by the rules, reluctant to complain—has been rewarded for its obedience by being ignored.
Last year, congressional Republicans took a run at rescinding money allocated to Moynihan Station. Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Congressman Jerry Nadler successfully beat back that challenge. Now the buzzards are circling again. The ballooning federal deficit has fueled a congressional scramble for any stray dollars; money that’s been sitting around unspent for more than a decade makes a tempting target. As does any money associated with Amtrak, which Republicans are trying to kill on ideological grounds.
Unlike ground zero or the West Side stadium, though, that’s as close as Moynihan Station has ever come to serious opposition. And still it can’t get built. One problem is that the station has suffered from the lack of a passionate, single-minded champion since the death of Senator Moynihan in 2003. Charles Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, which controls the site, gets some praise from train-station proponents, but Gargano has been busy elsewhere. To run the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, which has day-to-day responsibility for building the facility, the governor selected a 45-year-old failed actor whose chief talent appears to be raising money for Pataki’s electoral campaigns.
Yet the person who may end up rescuing the train station has an even more unlikely résumé. She’s lived in India for much of her adult life, working with refugees. She’s also been a clothing designer and a comedienne. She’s completing a novel that will be published by Judith Regan. Still, this irrepressible 47-year-old divorced mom possesses one unbeatable qualification. She is Senator Moynihan’s only daughter, Maura.
“All these little games and eddies and detours in the torrent that is New York politics distract people from the real goal, which is building the station,” she says. “This project benefits all New Yorkers, and I want them to feel as frightened as I am. If the state and city continue to dawdle, this chance will be gone.”
For the past two years, Moynihan has been gently nagging politicians, trying to inject a sense of urgency into the project. In many respects, the train station couldn’t be better connected: Former Moynihan aides Bill Cunningham, Kevin Sheekey, Doug Schoen, and Ken Gross all now work for Mayor Bloomberg. Yet when Maura Moynihan called Dan Doctoroff last year, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for economic development, Doctoroff—amazingly—told Moynihan he didn’t know much about the station’s prospects.
Recently, though, there’s been progress: Pataki and Gargano have struck deals to increase New Jersey Transit’s access to Moynihan Station, reducing the project’s reliance on Amtrak. Still, that progress highlights another absurdity: The current Penn Station handles ten times the number of passengers that are projected to pass through ground zero’s new PATH hub, yet the new downtown station has been awarded $2 billion in construction funding, while only $600 million is earmarked for Moynihan Station.
Meanwhile, the estimated cost of converting the post office has swelled from $315 million in 1993 to $1 billion today.
On May 2, Moynihan turned up the public-relations heat by throwing a station-boosting party inside the Farley building, attended by Bloomberg, Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Ray Kelly.
At the end of May, Gargano’s agency, after years of promising to choose a private developer to build the train station, heard presentations from three final suitors: Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties, Tishman Speyer, and a partnership of Vornado (Steven Roth) and the Related Companies (Stephen Ross).
“I don’t care which developer it is, as long as they pick a developer!” Maura Moynihan shouts. “Any developer!”
“If the state and the city continue to dawdle,” says Maura Moynihan,“this chance will be gone.”
The deal, including air rights, could net the state $500 million. But it might cost the city something less quantifiable: The train station could become an afterthought. Three years ago, ESDC decided to buy the entire property between Eighth and Ninth Avenues from the Postal Service, instead of simply the portion planned for the train station. As real-estate prices have skyrocketed, so has the attraction of using the Ninth Avenue side of the site to make a killing. The developers are proposing a commercial or residential tower be built behind the train station. At least one of the proposals would shrink the spectacular public room atop the train station that has been the centerpiece of the redesign. “
The train station is still the priority,” Gargano says. “We’ve made that clear to every developer. This is a very important project, and we’ve never given up on it.” He also promises a bold step forward, very soon: the selection of the winning developer “before the end of June. If we slip by a week, we slip.”
“I can be friends with anyone,” Maura Moynihan says, “as long as this station gets built.” Her approach is admirably pragmatic. Yet somewhere, perhaps in that great Senate cloakroom in the sky, Pat Moynihan must be sadly laughing at the foot-dragging politicians who have stalled his last great gift to the city.
Silver will block this one to, since its on the westside and will require state money as well, just watch
Originally Posted by kliq6
I don't think Silver can block this one, and even if he could, what's he going to say?
Insane though he may be, this new Penn Station needs someone like the wild-eyed Silver screaming murder if plans for this station don't move forward.The current Penn Station handles ten times the number of passengers that are projected to pass through ground zero’s new PATH hub, yet the new downtown station has been awarded $2 billion in construction funding, while only $600 million is earmarked for Moynihan Station.
only thing i can say is this, that in 1966 there was a young city council man fighting hard to protect a place called radio row, that same man today complains that we dont care enough about ground zero
I think Silver's pretense of blocking the stadium to "help" the WTC is starting to show. As more people are becoming aware, he got nothing for Downtown, and the Westside towers will eventually get built. The irony of it all is that the stadium itself will also get built. Silver should be ran out of his district, but only when those people begin to realize what happened....
NY Times
June 12, 2005
A Center for Mail That May Include Rail
LETTERS, THEY GET LETTERS
The General Post Office today. A new Penn Station is planned for the middle of the building.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
THE old Pennsylvania Station, built in 1910 from Seventh to Eighth Avenue and 31st to 33rd Street, is still one of New York's most famous buildings, even though it was destroyed more than 40 years ago. But how many people take notice of its equally grand sibling, built in 1913 along Eighth Avenue just across from the station?
Since the late 1960's, the station's sibling, the massive General Post Office, has looked reproachfully down its large staircase at Madison Square Garden, the station's architecturally unworthy successor. So if the project for a new Penn Station comes to fruition, its second iteration will be west of Eighth, not east.
The Pennsylvania Railroad announced its plan for a station in Manhattan in 1901, to compete better with the rail lines using Grand Central Terminal. Passengers arriving on the Pennsylvania had to cross the Hudson River on ferries from New Jersey. The General Post Office was then at the south end of City Hall Park, three decades old and remote from much of the island.
Revenue from carrying the mail was important, so the railroad sought to have a post office built near its new station. It offered the blockfront to the west for what it said was far less than the market value. But The New York Times reported that members of the House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee objected that the government would wind up with "a chunk of space in the air," because the railroad reserved the right to run trains under the new building, and even required a large courtyard in the center, left open to the tracks below.
After dropping the requirement that daylight reach the tracks - which would have made a broad working floor for mail sorting impossible - the Postal Service accepted the railroad's offer of the 190,000-square-foot plot from 31st to 33rd.
The architectural firm McKim, Mead & White was already designing the new railroad station but still had to win a competition for the new General Post Office. Instead of the moody, deeply shadowed Doric style of the station, it chose for the new post office a Corinthian colonnade with a stiff Roman hauteur, made even less friendly by the vast flight of steps up from Eighth Avenue.
When trains began to run under the Hudson River in 1910, the new General Post Office was still in construction but was ready to handle 250 tons of mail a day with an intricate network of spiral chutes, conveyor belts, elevators, automatic tilting platforms and pneumatic tubes.
A 1913 review in The Architectural Record expressed satisfaction that the postal building was "expressive of the old ideals of the firm" but hesitantly described it as "militantly classic" and lamented that it did not form part of an entire civic center, perhaps facing the new New York Public Library at Fifth and 42nd. The review also noted "the somewhat cryptic legend" on the post office's frieze: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
The quote is based on an account by Herodotus of the couriers of King Xerxes of Persia, who served him during the Persian defeat by the Greeks at the battle of Salamis in the fifth century B.C.
The main lobby - behind the screen of columns on the Eighth Avenue front - is a high, vaulted space, with most of its writing tables, bronze work and plaster trim intact, although cluttered with wastebaskets, signs and other impedimenta. The ceiling is soiled and damaged by years of water leaks, but just discernible are intricate seals of nations cooperating with the United States in postal matters. A 1956 article in The Times said the original colors were light green, tan, rose and gold, but this polychromy is gone.
Beyond this narrow space only postal employees are allowed - but there is little of note. Above the main hall, on the second floor, runs a long suite of generously sized offices, simply finished but high-ceilinged, with oak furniture and trim - something like the administration building of an Ivy League college of the same period.
The rest of the building is a network of long, broad corridors of Pentagon-like scale, with individual offices for postal departments behind old-fashioned wire-and-glass doors. These are organized doughnut style around a big internal light court. The rear facade of the 1913 building - now covered by a 1935 extension to Ninth Avenue - was the side where trucks picked up and delivered mail, via a street running through the block.
In 1929, before the 1935 extension, the architect Francis Keally prepared a startling design for a Midtown airport, proposing a flat roof on top of the post office and the western half of Penn Station, extending across Eighth Avenue on arches of heroic scale.
McKim, Mead & White also designed the 1935 extension, which is rarely noticed. But the later facade is more agreeable than the one on Eighth. The old Penn Station got along just fine without a grand staircase, and the Ninth Avenue facade of the post office is also at grade level, less grand but much more approachable. The pink granite used in 1935 is warmer than the stone on the 1913 building. And a sculptural element over the main doorway on Ninth Avenue - two female figures flanking the seal of the United States - recalls the haunting "Day" and "Night" reliefs from the old train station.
Renamed in 1982 the James A. Farley Building, McKim, Mead & White's post office is due for major surgery later this decade, if plans by the Empire State Development Corporation come through. Ron Jury, a spokesman for the agency, says that it will choose a developer-architect team this summer to build a new Penn Station, using as a matrix the old General Post Office.
A general design was set out by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 2001: slice the building in half at the middle, restoring the old vehicular opening from 31st to 33rd Street. This would leave the post office in place behind its giant colonnade but create a new midblock entryway for a subgrade station. The light court in the center of the 1913 post office would be opened up to light the station below, and a huge metal and glass structure - like a flying saucer crashed sideways - would project up over the complex, providing a dramatic contrast with the original colonnade.
E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com
NY OBSERVER
Final Decision Looms For Moynihan Station
by Matthew Schuerman
Toward the end of an industry luncheon one recent Wednesday, after the roast chicken but before the fruit torte, prominent real-estate lawyer Jonathan Mechanic announced that the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust had landed the contract to develop the Farley Post Office at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street into the next Grand Central Terminal.
It was, he explained, one of the keys to the development of the West Side—and, considering the Jets stadium proposal had just disintegrated two days earlier, the only key within reach.
It was a plum contract, as the developer would control 100,000 square feet of retail space, another 750,000 square feet of potential office space, plus one million square feet of air rights, all with significant tax breaks.
In other words, the project—the creation of the new Moynihan Station—will be not just the next Grand Central, but the next 10 Grand Centrals all at once. It was such a long-awaited project, dating back to the invention of the wheel, that the couple hundred real-estate-niks in the audience nodded knowingly. And then they looked around not so knowingly: Was there something in the paper about this that they missed?
There had been rumors on the Internet, to be sure, but in terms of a confirmed, signed, ready-for-the-publicity-department contract, no one had said a word. Mr. Mechanic nevertheless congratulated David Greenbaum, president of Vornado’s New York office division, sitting a few tables ahead of him, and asked how soon the station would be ready. Cushman and Wakefield C.E.O. Bruce Mosler, sitting on the dais as part of the day’s panel, chimed in. "Which is it, David? Two years or three?" He held up two fingers on his right hand, three in his left. The room erupted in laughter, but Mr. Greenbaum muttered something about being a public company and fell silent.
While a state official confirmed that the Related and Vornado partnership is indeed in final negotiations over the lease terms and price with the agency in charge of the project, the Empire State Development Corporation, so is Mortimer Zuckerman’s Boston Properties. To a lesser extent, the ESDC has also negotiated with another bidder, Tishman Speyer, which has partnered with Jones Lang LaSalle, the official said.
The final decision is to be made by the end of July, according to a state official. But then again, the ESDC had said some time ago that it would decide by January. And before that—well, it had named a developer once before for this project, four years ago, only to change the specs so significantly that it had to bid out again.
"We are in the final stages of our evaluation to select a developer for Moynihan Station," ESDC chairman Charles Gargano said in a prepared statement. "This project will be the catalyst for the development of the far West Side of midtown Manhattan."
The station’s appeal is obvious to just about everyone—except the people who were supposed to operate there. Indeed, this is the sort of project with many proponents and no opponents, and yet it is between five and seven years behind schedule, depending on whose timetable you’re using.
Politicians, including the late Senator for whom the station will be named, have long championed Moynihan Station as a way of making up for the loss of Pennsylvania Station, which was torn down to make way for Madison Square Garden four decades ago. No longer will thousands of commuters crawl like ants out of the fetid tunnels of Penn Station and squint when they see daylight. The Skidmore Owings & Merrill design would still put the train platforms underground—they have to be—but will open up the ceiling by means of a giant skylight.
It turns out, according to a few developers and planners, that the city doesn’t need a Jets stadium to develop the West Side, and it might not even need the No. 7 line extension, which was supposed to bring the subway west on 42nd Street to 11th Avenue and then south. And we’re not just talking residential development, which could be built on piers in the Hudson River and still sell in today’s voracious market. "The thing we’re really waiting for is the Farley Post Office," said one executive at a real-estate company. "Once that comes through, you’ll have commuters streaming through to Ninth Avenue and it will make that area that much more attractive to employers and retailers."
The office space in Moynihan Station—including a possible tower that would be put atop the rear post-office annex along Ninth Avenue—could well become the first commercial building to go up in the so-called Hudson Yards district. What’s more, if Moynihan Station becomes a commuter hub for New Jersey Transit, which is still unsettled, it would bring mass transit a block further west.
"We always thought that real-estate market would evolve out of Penn Station, which is already a central business district of a sort," said Anna Levin, co-chair of the land-use committee for Community Board 4 on the West Side. "We actually think it makes more sense that way—development will proceed along 34th Street as opposed to 11th Avenue, which is much further away."
Culture of Inertia
Indeed, political and business leaders are beginning to wipe away the tears they shed after the Jets stadium fell through, if they had shed any at all. Senator Charles Schumer decried, again, what he calls "the culture of inertia" during a recent appearance, though he had never taken a position for or against the stadium in the first place. And he believed that development would continue on the West Side, not only without the stadium but without the tax breaks that the Bloomberg administration was planning to extend to developers who would put up office towers nearby. Instead, he said, focus on the bringing the subway west and aim those incentives instead at Ground Zero, where 4.3 million square feet of office space is going up with only token tenants committed so far.
"Traditionally in this city, infrastructure alone is sufficient to induce development," the Senator said. "Once developers believe the No. 7 line extension is for real they will flock to the area and property values and concomitant property-tax collections will soar."
Many in his audience agreed. "What was important about the city’s incentives for the West Side was that they would bring about enough development quickly enough to get the subway line built in time for the Olympics," said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, a Chamber of Commerce–type group. "Absent the pressure of the deadline of the Olympics, we don’t need the incentives."
A few feet away, William Rudin, the chairman of the Association for a Better New York, and a member of a prominent real-estate family himself, added, "I agree with the Senator that the focus has to be on lower Manhattan. For downtown, it’s critical to get these things done now. The West Side will happen down the road."
The Mayor is not so sure. Later in the day, spokesman Ed Skyler said Mayor Bloomberg is moving ahead with both the No. 7 extension and the tax incentives. "We share the Senator’s beliefs that public money should not be wasted on unnecessary tax breaks," Mr. Skyler said. "These are targeted incentives approved 45 to two by the City Council and designed to provide jobs, affordable housing, park land and tax revenues. We have no plans to scale back the incentives."
How much of a difference the $600 million Farley makeover—not counting the money the developer will spend preparing office and retail space—is going to make on the West Side depends on when, or even whether, it gets made over. The Farley building—call it Moynihan Station if you are optimistic—has become the poster child of a bureaucracy that moves about as fast as the M23 bus. But it’s also an example of a project pushed from above with little support from below. It is easy to see how a pretty building can instill civic spirit and please the public, but will it get people to take more trains? Many agencies are involved, and it’s not clear how many of them are really excited about it to pay for it (though almost all of the money has already been committed). Contrast that to the Grand Central Terminal renovation, which was certainly primed and prodded from outside, but fell squarely in the M.T.A.’s hands. The renovation of Union Station in Washington, D.C.—the other major template—was created by and for Amtrak.
The U.S. Postal Service, after first balking, finally came around as a partner in the project after the state offered to buy the building and lease back a portion. (The post office will still operate there, but in a smaller space.)
Amtrak, for whom this new station supposedly was being built, bailed out on the project a year ago, battered fiscally and politically. But from the get-go, the technical parameters of subterranean space would have limited how much good Amtrak would have gotten out of it. Passengers could have entered the tracks from Moynihan, according to Amtrak spokesman Clifford Black, but for the most part they would have ended up backtracking east toward Penn Station. That’s because the project never called for moving the tracks or the platforms, just the entrances to them.
A state official involved in the project counters that it was Amtrak that came up with the idea of redoing Farley in the first place, and it did so to relieve crowding on the eastern ends of the platforms most accessible from Penn Station. Amtrak, according to the official, was planning to keep Penn Station open even if it followed through on Farley.
Still, according to an individual familiar with the layout of the tracks, just nine of Amtrak’s 21 tracks have platforms that extend more than 200 feet below Farley. The longest ones, which measure a total of 1,600 feet, have about a quarter of their length actually below Farley.
New Jersey Transit is the leading contender to replace Amtrak, and the state hopes to sign an agreement about how much the commuter rail will contribute to the project by July 31. Yet New Jersey Transit, which uses Amtrak’s tracks, will find itself in a similar position, and is still expected to retain facilities in Penn Station as well. Still, with traffic growing quickly on its tracks, New Jersey Transit needs all the space it can get its hands on.
The Long Island Rail Road may also use Moynihan—but again, primarily as an access point. The LIRR’s parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has committed $35 million to extend a concourse below Farley’s Eighth Avenue steps that will connect its various tracks, according to a state official.
There are those, including Senator Moynihan’s daughter Maura, who believe that the technical difficulties of conforming to one user or another is something that can be overcome, given enough willpower, and that such willpower will increase exponentially once a developer comes on board.
"The reason the choice of developer is so important is that we will have all that energy and talent that the private sector brings with it," says Ms. Moynihan, who has founded the Moynihan Station Citizens Group to advocate completion. "The stadium debate consumed everyone’s attention. Now we can refocus on Moynihan Station."
Hold out those fingers again, Mr. Mosler. How many do you see?
My guess of the winning Vornado/Related proposal:
What's the likelihood of moving Amtrak to Grand Central once Moynihan is completed? At least then, MSG can be demolished and replaced with something worthwhile.
Architect
Who is the architect of the winning scheme?
Remote. The tracks have nowhere else to go and Amtrak is certainly not going to pay for any tunneling to replace them.
My guess is that by the time this gets moving, Amtrak (or the state) will reconsider and be included in the plan. It is insane not to have Amtrak (or its successor) included in this train station...even though their actual ridership levels are far under NJtransit's. Maybe once the Acela gets back up and running.
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