Gov. Kathy Hochul left her $33 billion Penn Station-area redevelopment proposal out of her State of the State address, heartening critics who desire a less expensive and fewer destructive technique to create a recent station.
The Penn scheme didn’t appear, either, within the governor’s 267-page, “Achieving the Latest York Dream” agenda featuring “147 daring initiatives” that was released along with the speech.
The “Dream” list included many transit and MTA-related projects equivalent to the Metro-North Penn Station Access project to construct recent stations within the Bronx. For the reason that whole point of the so-called “Empire Station Complex” is supposedly to create a greater Penn Station, its omission from Hochul’s agenda was curious.
Lawyer Chuck Weinstock, who represents neighborhood groups and others against the proposal, quipped, “She is perhaps the one person within the state who isn’t talking about it. Possibly she’s starting to know that no one wants this thing.”
Hochul spokesman Justin Henry didn’t address why she didn’t mention the project within the speech or the “Dream” report. He said, “The reconstruction of Penn Station is a priority of the Hochul administration as reflected within the aggressive timetable for reconstruction and the continued, sustained progress on this project since Governor Hochul took office.”
The plan which she inherited from her predecessor Andrew Cuomo would demolish several blocks of supposedly “blighted” properties within the Penn Station/Madison Square Garden area, including occupied apartment buildings and historic churches, to make room for eight giant office towers, most to be built by Vornado Realty Trust.
The scheme involves demolishing fully occupied apartment buildings and historic churches.Vornado Realty Trust
Many of the office towers are expected to be built by Vornado.
But its prospects dimmed after Vornado chairman and Penn-area developer Steven Roth’s recent remark that the time wasn’t right for brand spanking new ground-up-development.
The newest black eye was the revelation, reported in Crain’s, that the Empire State Development agency approved it without even taking a look at cost and revenue estimates by Ernst & Young, which ESD hired to crunch the numbers.
Weinstock called the state’s admission that it ignored the info “damning.”
A trio of architects will show alternative plans for Penn Station on Jan. 26 at Cooper Union.Levine-Roberts/Sipa USA
Meanwhile, a trio of distinguished architects will show alternative plans on Jan. 26 at Cooper Union. They’re PAU firm head Vishaan Chakrabarti, independent architect Alexandros Washburn and Atelier and Co. principal Richard Cameron.
Washburn’s proposal was first shown in The Post in December.
On a lighter note, a different Crain’s story on a court case involving the project dug up e-mails between ESD, Vornado and their spin doctors at two different P.R. firms over the best way to water down The Post’s “negative” coverage.
“We predict now we have [Steve Cuozzo] positioned” to report one story I used to be working on as merely “battle lines being drawn,” an unidentified person at P.R. firm Berlin Rosen gloated to Vornado suits and former ESD official Holly Leicht in August 2021.
My position since then: I’ve characterised Hochul’s plan as “a boondoggle,” “terrible,” “corrupt,” “fraudulent” and “a nightmare.”
