Everybody jumped to conclusions. The purchaser of Felt Forum would manage the station and not Mr. Dolan’s organization.
1 Like
Here’s the text -
An Italian firm generating buzz for its [Penn Station plan] aims to buy the theater attached to Madison Square Garden and replace it with nothing.
Well, nothing that makes money, at least: a glass entrance to Penn Station.
A subsidiary of ASTM Group is in talks to buy the former Felt Forum — subsequently named and unnamed the Hulu Theater — and a service road for $1 billion. The deal with MSG Entertainment would only make sense for ASTM if paired with a revenue-generating agreement to operate Penn Station, which involves three layers of government and several transportation agencies.
According to the publication, ASTM would build an Eighth Avenue entrance to the station and place a rectangular glass base around MSG to allow more natural light into the infamously dungeon-like transit hub. Versions of the plan have been kicking around for years, championed by various players including Vishaan Chakrabarti, who is working with ASTM on the latest one, as is former Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Port Authority chief Patrick Foye.
The Italian company is reportedly spreading word that a deal with theater owner MSG is in place, although the prospective seller would not confirm that. Nothing figures to happen without ASTM also coming to terms with the Hochul administration, the Adams administration, the MTA, Amtrak, NJ Transit and probably the Biden administration, too. Amtrak owns Penn Station.
For a firm to appear out of the blue and pull off such a coup would be unprecedented in New York politics, but stranger things have happened. The possibility, however remote, opened up because the state’s plan sank with the market for office development, on which it was based.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno Lieber was initially dismissive of buying the theater and building an entrance, which he estimated would cost $2 billion.
But Lieber, the featured speaker at a Crain’s breakfast this week, did praise ASTM — which had bought a front-row table — for keeping Penn Station on the front burner, which could give the state an alternative to authorizing the development of 10 towers around the station and steering tax revenue from them to the transit hub.
Vornado Realty Trust, the dominant land owner in the district and prospective developer of eight of the towers, recently threw cold water on the plan by saying the market for ground-up development is frozen. Key members of the state legislature, which would have to approve the tower plan, lost faith in it. Gov. Kathy Hochul then said she would explore alternatives.
ASTM has yet to reveal how much it would cost to renovate the station and how it would finance the redevelopment. The firm has said it would be cheaper than the existing $7 billion to $10 billion plan with Vornado, but has not offered details.
It’s also not clear how much ASTM would demand in revenue from the station, which the Italian firm proposes to manage for 50 years.
The nonprofit Municipal Art Society, for what it’s worth, published an op-ed in the New York Daily News saying the ASTM plan “needs to be taken seriously.” The group had been adamant about the need to move Madison Square Garden itself for a Penn Station rebuild, but backtracked upon ASTM’s entrance into the discussion.
— Holden Walter-Warner and Erik Engquist
This will make the utterly heinous MSG less ugly, but it will do nothing to fix Penn other than adding nice entrances on 8th and on the side streets that most commuters won’t use.
The City must invest in its future and stand up to the Dolans. I’ll be in the Marco Island sunshine soon enough, but I don’t want to see a wasted opportunity here.
3 Likes
Nobody ever answered my question as to why anyone who has called it so believes that the newest proposal is halfassed without using justification. Don’t use a term without saying a reasoning as to why you believe it to be so thinking that people will understand why one thinks it is so, especially when all the details havent even been released. This is why people frequently ask clarification questions towards anybody.
I still dont see anything halfassed about anything relating to the ASTM proposal, it looks amazing and there’s nothing wrong with it.
6 Likes
I, too, don’t understand what is “half-assed” about building a giant new LIRR concourse, and removing the visual blight of the current MSG facade. It’s a massive improvement for Penn Station users and the neighborhood and doesn’t preclude any future improvements.
The “rethink Penn Station” people are delusional, BTW. Why would you build a Disney-style copy of something demolished long ago? Especially when the surrounding context has completely changed?
1 Like
In response to TKDV’s point as well as your comment crawdad, I offer the following. The term half-assed" is unfortunate, but it does convey a sense of disappointment grounded by informed observation. Were it the case, globally, and historically, to have great hubs of urban transportation routinely subordinate their grandeur to other uses, then the ASTM proposal would be more than acceptable for Penn Station. But, as all the great examples reveal, this is not the case for the most revered stations.
Are there fine examples of stations, that are mounted upon, confined, masked, and hidden by other participants in the cityscape? Of course. Are these placed on post cards, designated with historic status, used in songs and in movies? Rarely. Utilitarian outcomes struggle to inspire (especially when the use they house is itself utilitarian). The precedent for any improvement to Penn Station was (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s defensive position) set with the original building. A civic focused, cathedral (as some called it) to the daily and routine transportation needs of the citizens of NYC. It lifted the spirits of those who used it because it represented a unique moment within ones day to day routine, and within the Cityscape itself. A point of transition from the unremarkable to the remarkable. That achievement is emulated by a handful of other preeminent stations around the world, in the great Capitols of nations, past and present.
No one would argue against NYC being mentioned in the same breath as such places. In that context it is disappointing to fail to grasp for such grandeur once again, given the rare opportunity at hand for a site as storied as Penn Station. The negative comments on this thread reveal, that for many, it is an act of settling for something less than what was before. To respond with an off the cuff comment about a “Disney-style copy” is the same as labeling it a “half assed effort”. Your point about the “surrounding context” having “completely changed” is nonsensical. I’d be curious to know what you mean by this. Maybe I misunderstood? For arguments sake, the context around GCS has also completely changed, without diminishing the stature, presence, or design of that landmarked building. Emulating a classic is not an act of “Disney-fication”. The ASTM proposal acknowledges the constraints and settles for a fairly pleasing contemporary alternative. It’s design is not “half assed”. What is “half assed” is the mindset and process by which great achievements and aspirations are routinely made to seem impossible. Not worthy of more “practical” and modern considerations. The burden facing the ASTM plan is that what came before set a standard and marked a place in history for the building as well as the City it called home.
If Penn Station had always been a Shinjuku type station, then the ASTM proposal would be heralded as a dramatic improvement and worthy of consideration. If Penn Station had been a more peripheral station within the City’s network, the ASTM proposal would, without a doubt, be widely heralded for its contribution to urban rail design. Neither of these is the case with Penn Station. It occupies an “apex” location, in an “Alpha” world city. A mentor of mine has a great quote…“you get the city you deserve”. The history of NYC’s many amazing buildings shows that previous generations believed they deserved a world capitol of a City. The ASTM proposal resonates with a different and arguably lesser goal. Whether one likes the proposal or not, misses the important point…(I actually like the proposed improvements). The important point is whether or not the proposal is worthy of the location and history of the site.
6 Likes
Bravo traveler. Beautifully written.
1 Like
Traveler, this is one small piece of an overall puzzle. The MSG plan precludes nothing. It has nothing to do with the long-term Vornado plans, with Penn South, with the new tunnel, etc. Your disappointment seems to be rooted in the fact that this improvement doesn’t solve all issues with Penn. It reminds me of the previous complaints for Moynihan, and for the LIRR concourse improvements. It’s cliche, but don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Penn is vastly greater than before, BTW. The old Penn was pretty horrible, except for the amazing concourse. I don’t think most observers actually understand the old Penn, which is the current Penn, except with the head chopped off, and below-ground portions vastly expanded/improvement. The pre-demoltion Penn had an amazing entrance hall and the functional parts sucked. Anyone who used Penn pre-1994 (the first major expansion/improvement) remembers. The 1960-era traveler had a pretty terrible experience.
The future Penn will have at least three grand halls - Moynihan, MSG, Penn South. It will have eight additional tracks, and a new tunnel, with capacity doubled. The LIRR complex is already amazingly improved. Eventually NJT will have to fix and expand its concourse. I’m not sure if any of this will compare to the grandeur of the original hall, but in aggregate, the complex will be vastly better. It’s already better.
3 Likes
Do you know what the west side of Manhattan has? Great evening light.
Do you know what creating a grand 8th Avenue entrance will bring to Penn? Great evening light streaming into the station. If this plan goes forward this will be a massive improvement on what’s there now. The new mid-block atrium is nice, but not as nice as what the 8th Avenue entrance will do for the station.
6 Likes
Also, there seems to be this implication that we could one day recreate the old Penn headhouse if only MSG would leave. This is false. The old headhouse was replaced by MSG + 1 Penn Plaza + 2 Penn Plaza. 1 and 2 PP are two of the largest and most valuable office buildings in the U.S., and aren’t going anywhere. And then you still couldn’t replicate it, bc the below-ground infrastructure has radically changed, with a number of major alterations.
In other words, we’re never getting back the old headhouse. It’s done. If MSG one day leaves, we’ll get a new headhouse, and some office towers, but we won’t ever get a recreation or something approximating the pre-1963 headhouse. Move on, and let’s do the best we can under present conditions. Hopefully one day MSG relocates. The current proposal accommodates this possibility.
4 Likes
Need a citation on most valuable. As for their size, that isn’t a large barrier to tearing them down.
That does not mean you couldn’t replicate it.
Defeatism is not realism.
1 and 2 PP encompass about 4.5 million square ft., are owned by some of the most respected institutional RE owners on earth and are assessed with a value in billions. The owners also sunk well over a billion in them in recent years, with gut renovations. They’ll stand long after you and I are gone. They’ll be here for centuries.
No one is replicating the old Penn headhouse. It’s about as likely as replicating the pre-Dutch Lenape village on Manhattan island. The dream scenario is replacing MSG, but no one is even suggesting going further. It would be idiotic. If you ever removed MSG, you would have plenty of room for a grand new headhouse, but it wouldn’t ever be a copy of the original.
1 Like
So regular Manhattan real estate? Gotcha.
I never said they were moving, or that it was even likely. I said it’s not some impossible dream to tear them down, because it isn’t. It would be relatively easy to tear them down. That isn’t going to happen obviously.
Except it could be. Where is this idea coming from that this is somehow impossible or out of the realm of reality?
Obviously not likely to happen, at all, but very possible.
One Penn Plaza is not on the footprint of the 1910 Penn Station. It’s on the footprint of the old Greyhound bus terminal.
1 Like
Speaking of, kinda off topic, where is the current greyhound terminal?
Operations of the two old Greyhound terminals (one at the current site of Penn Plaza, one in Hell’s Kitchen on 51st Street) were consolidated into the Port Authority Bus Terminal in 1963.
This article above is from 2019, but it was updated last month with details about the functions the old Greyhound terminal at Penn Station served after 1963.
2 Likes
Nice! So that means they’ll be part of the upgrade with the PABT
Many conversations such as this tend to devolve rapidly into ideological camps when the topic discussed presents itself with complex variables. I use the word complex purposefully, as it means something very different from complicated. Math can be complex, but with the rigor of formulas and laws, solutions are achievable, and even predictable. On the other hand politics is “complicated”…ie: immune to logic, unpredictable, dare I say, nonsensical. That is why the phrase political ideology exists. Ideology is not a means for delivering practical outcomes, it is a means for pushing agendas, more often than not ones that are fearful of change and inward looking. Similar to politics, architectural design tends to sequester folks into one ideological camp or another. In the case of architecture the two factions battling it out across the landscape for supremacy and validation are traditional/classicists vs contemporary/modernists. Urban design has a similar schism.
Crawdad, your responses are saddled with straw man arguments of what is “practical”, and shrouded in veils of technocratic speak. As such you fail to hear what is being said…in this case read what is being written. My post does not suggest that the original Penn Station be raised from the dead. I would not be opposed if this occurred, as it would heal one of the greatest acts of architectural vandalism carried out by modern man. But, I’m not an ideologue. I would be just as happy with an inspiring work of contemporary architecture with one caveat, that it be mindful of and support the civic realm around it. The key word I used in my post was “emulate”. Do not confuse this with “replicate”. You will notice in my post I do not advocate for the original Penn Station to be replicated. As you point out, it cannot as 2PP would be in the way. I am well versed in the details of the changes above and below grade in the decades since the station was demolished, as well as the developers involved and the real estate in play. These current conditions do not preclude something great happening at Penn Station/MSG. What does are piecemeal efforts, aimed at solving parts of specific deficiencies (many which you call out), that are not captured by a compelling and comprehensive vision backed by bold moves. My argument, which mcart has expressed understanding of, is to reach for a bold vision now, and to re-establish the grandeur imparted by the original Penn Station’s urban disposition, streetscape presence, and primacy both as experienced internally and externally. Masterfully designed architecture and urban planning can achieve these no matter the “design camp” involved.
MSG has had its moment in the sun, having cast a shadow across what was once a truly epic urban experience. The forces for its removal are closer in alignment today than at any other time. To “settle” for less than epic is to fear the complex nature demanded by greatness. It is not worthy of what has been lost.
4 Likes