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NY Gov. Cuomo lays out renovation plan for Penn Station and Farley Post Office

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G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Link.

Please make this happen. Penn station and Madison Square Garden are an eyesore.

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo continued laying out his vision for a modernized, statewide transportation network on Wednesday afternoon with one more ambitious project: the renovation of Pennsylvania Station, one of the busiest transit halls in the Western Hemisphere, and the creation of an adjunct train and retail hub within the walls of the blocklong general post office across Eighth Avenue.

During a news conference at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, Mr. Cuomo called on New Yorkers to “think big” as they did in the past, with equal measures of ambition and audacity.

The announcement was one in a series of appearances by the governor centering on his plans for improving New York State’s infrastructure, which include adding a third track to part of the Long Island Rail Road’s Main Line. On Wednesday morning, in Syracuse, he proposed spending $22 billion to improve roads and bridges, largely upstate.

At Madison Square Garden, he characterized his plans, which also include new air and rail terminals, new transit stations and a Hudson River rail tunnel, as “the biggest construction program in our state’s history.”

“What happens tomorrow depends on what we do today,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Let’s be as bold and ambitious as our forefathers before us.”

The governor’s initiative in Manhattan involves projects on both sides of Eighth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, where Madison Square Garden sits atop the warren of narrow and confusing passageways in Penn Station.

Mr. Cuomo said the state, along with Amtrak and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, would solicit proposals from developers whose options would include the creation of a grand glass-walled entrance to Penn Station on Eighth Avenue.

The project could entail razing the 5,600-seat theater that sits beneath Madison Square Garden, upgrading the shops in the complex, and adding new entrances on Seventh Avenue or 33rd Street.

Developers would undertake the project, Mr. Cuomo said, in return for the rights to control all the retail shops in Penn Station.

Simultaneously, the state and its partners will solicit a developer for the long-gestating plan to turn the nearly vacant James A. Farley Post Office into a train station and a giant waiting room for Amtrak passengers, as well as shops and office space.

Developers could submit proposals for either project or both.

...

It is unclear exactly how the more than $3 billion project, which the governor is calling the Empire Station Complex, will be paid for, but Mr. Cuomo is expected to unveil a financial plan for his transportation network at next week’s State of the State speech. The governor said that $325 million would come from government sources. He also said that the request for proposals would go out to developers later this week.

Mary Rowe, executive vice president of the Municipal Art Society, a proponent of a renovated Penn Station, lauded the governor for highlighting the need for urgent and ambitious change.

“However,” she added, “these improvements won’t be enough to fully address Penn Station’s severe overcrowding or meet the growing needs of its rapidly developing neighborhood and our regional economy.”

On any given day more than 600,000 commuters and travelers — triple what the station was originally designed for — move through the underground labyrinth of Penn Station.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo also announced that he wanted to freeze tolls on the Tappan Zee Bridge and the New York State Thruway until 2020. He suggested the state spend $700 million to keep tolls on the Thruway at their current level.

A $3.9 billion replacement for the Tappan Zee currently being built on the Hudson River is scheduled to open in 2018. The New York State Thruway Authority created a task force last year to make recommendations for possible toll increases on the new bridge.
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B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Oh it is about damn time someone noticed how bad these places have gotten. It's not the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but it still sucks.
 
A

Arkeband

Banned
Upstate roads and bridges are currently a disaster, so I'm pretty excited about the non-train portion of that.
 
D

Deleted member 20415

Unconfirmed Member
Weren't they going to kick out MSG from that space and build more on top? I know the article mentions razing the theater part of MSG... but what about the rest of the thing?
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Cagey said:
Penn Station has a certain charm to it.
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The charm of a dystopian movie.

El_TigroX said:
Weren't they going to kick out MSG from that space and build more on top? I know the article mentions razing the theater part of MSG... but what about the rest of the thing?
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I believe they are still deciding whether to tear it down. They have seven years left on the lease, so I'm assuming they will make the call by then.
 
F

Fuchsdh

Member
If they need more room, they could always raze Madison Square Garden and put something nice-looking there (again).
 
D

Deleted member 20415

Unconfirmed Member
Cagey said:
The NJ Transit waiting area is nice enough, and there's even a Tiecoon nearby for all your Ivy League logo tie needs!
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Ah yes, the charm of the Kabooz, and the stench of one of the scariest bathrooms in the Western World.

This should be a test... if you say you'll miss the current Penn, you should be run out of town!
 
A

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
The best part about moving from LI to Westchester is that I now go through Grand Central when I head down to the city instead of Penn. Penn is a butthole.
 
F

FStop7

Banned
Just curious as to why this is handled by the governor of the state rather than the mayor? It seems kind of odd to me.
 
M

MetatronM

Unconfirmed Member
El_TigroX said:
Weren't they going to kick out MSG from that space and build more on top? I know the article mentions razing the theater part of MSG... but what about the rest of the thing?
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GK86 said:
I believe they are still deciding whether to tear it down. They have seven years left on the lease, so I'm assuming they will make the call by then.
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Dolan was right next to the Governor on stage during the press conference at Madison Square Garden. I don't think he'd be so cheery if he was being forced to tear down the building he just spent a billion dollars on renovating just 2 years ago.
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
MetatronM said:
Dolan was right next to the Governor on stage during the press conference at Madison Square Garden. I don't think he'd be so cheery if he was being forced to tear down the building he just spent a billion dollars on renovating just 2 years ago.
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He should be happy regardless, considering that he/MSG doesn't pay property taxes.
 
diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
Plans have been put forward for the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Penn Station, and LaGuardia.

I really doubt any of those 3 projects will have started 20 years from now.

El_TigroX said:
Ah yes, the charm of the Kabooz, and the stench of one of the scariest bathrooms in the Western World.

This should be a test... if you say you'll miss the current Penn, you should be run out of town!
Click to expand...

Wife and I always joke about getting the outdoor seating at Kabooz.
 
F

FoneBone

Member
Penn Station is ugly and awful, but a shiny new station doesn't do much to address actual transit needs.

Considering we all know that Penn Station is an ugly mess of a train station that doesn’t serve as a particularly alluring gateway to New York City, what, you may wonder, are the objections to this project? Simply put, it is another multi-billion-dollar expense that, by itself, doesn’t do anything to solve the region’s real problem of transit capacity. Amtrak’s CEO Joe Boardman stated that the Penn Station overhaul is “setting the stage for the future expansion of rail service and ridership that will be made possible by the Gateway Program,” but without a firm commitment to build the Gateway Tunnel, the Penn overhaul is nothing more than lipstick on a pig.

And so we arrive back at the problem that Cuomo’s plan is a lot of flash without much substance. Despite promises to build the tunnel in his presentation, we still don’t know what the future holds for Gateway, and nothing Cuomo has said over the past few days of infrastructure press conferences has changed that reality. Gateway exists as an idea with some momentum and vague commitments to reach a funding agreement. There are no dollars flowing, no timelines, no studies, no shovels. Much as the World Trade Center PATH Hub was a $4 billion expense to create a shopping mall, so too might the $3 billion plan to overhaul Penn Station. And the sad part is that for those $7 billion in building expenses, we could have had a new trans-Hudson tunnel sooner rather than later.
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M

massoluk

Banned
It's about time, Penn Station looks like it was stuck in the 80.

edit: But yeah, seriously, may be use the money to renovate all the subway station first. Like the gate between subway and the car so people don't get kill.
 
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