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News About Pennsylvania Station
GOOD NEWS: New York will finally get a new Penn Station: Amtrak announced that Penn Transformation Partners is the winner of its RFP process, and the busiest train station in the western hemisphere will once again be a gateway worthy of New York. Here’s the PTP design. It’s a little bland (CNU NYC favored the rebuild/update of McKim, Mead & White’s great old station—the greatest New York building ever demolished), but this will be an enormous improvement over the eyesore we’ve endured for sixty years. The PTP team knows how to get it built, and the Federal government will kick in $8 billion. That means they will be working with New York favorite Andy “Train Daddy” Byford (more good news).
BAD NEWS: As part of the Empire Station Coalition, CNU NYC spent years opposing the Vornado Realty Trust’s plan to build block after block of shiny glass supertall towers that few New Yorkers want, from “river to river.” Now that President Trump is in charge of building the new station, we learn that the $8 billion dollars come with strings attached, and that America’s Developer-in-Chief is pulling the strings, overriding local planning and taking revenue from New York City and State.
That puts Vornado Realty Trust in a stronger position than ever. Vornado Chair and CEO Steven Roth is a major Trump donor, sometimes a Trump business partner, and a Trump political ally, and President Trump will decide how high Vornado’s towers around the station can rise, and how much Vornado will pay for the privilege. Local government will lose the revenue and have no say in what gets built. With Trump deciding how tall is too tall, the future of the skyline and the streetscape around the station looks bleak.
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