[NYguy]

https://www.ourtownny.com/news/who-is-go...illion-rebuild-of-penn-station-EC5895251

The plan now being considered by the Trump Administration will be to earmark city property taxes from surrounding real estate developments and funnel it directly to pay down the tab on the massive rebuilding project.


Michael Oreskes
30 May 2026

The Trump administration has revived Andrew Cuomo’s plan to use payments from real estate development around Penn Station to help fund the rebuilding of the station itself.

“PILOTS are on the table,” reported the Manhattan Borough President, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, using the acronym for payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, a system that diverts city property taxes to a specified purpose, such as rebuilding the station.

Officials familiar with the Penn project said that the main new construction envisioned outside the station would be a luxury office tower that Vornado has long wanted to build. The tower would rise on the site of the Pennsylvania Hotel, which Vornado demolished in 2023.

When he was governor, Andrew Cuomo proposed what became known as the General Project Plan, a massive redevelopment of the area around Penn Station, including the construction of up to ten large office towers. The developers would then have made payments, in lieu of property taxes, to help fund the rebuilding of the station.

The project generated intense community resistance, but ultimately stalled, not over the neighborhood blow back, but because of the COVID induced real estate slump which undermined the profitability of new office space. But that lull seems to have been temporary and luxury office space in New York is now going at record prices.

The GPP also included plans to expand train service by demolishing the block south of the station. Gov. Kathy Hochul has left the GPP in place but said she would not countenance destruction of a neighborhood. Officials said the new Penn Station plan leaves the block to the south intact.

Vornado Realty Trust is the largest landowner around Penn Station and would have built several of the office towers envisioned in the GPP. One of those towers is the one on the Hotel Pennsylvania site.

Vornado is now a partner in the consortium designated the other day by The Trump Administration as the Master Developer of the new Penn Station.

Officials said the main role Vornado will play in the Master Developer consortium is as manager of expanded retail offerings inside the station, something it has developed considerable expertise in managing both retail spaces in Moynihan Train Hall and the Long Island Railroads concourse on the north side of Penn Station.

As for PILOT payments from Vornado from the new office tower it wants to build, those could be collected under the authority of the existing GPP if Governor Hochul agreed.

Amtrak does not have authority to collect such payments directly, although a house committee recently approved legislation that would give Amtrak the power to do just that at redevelopment projects around the country.

The legislation was moved forward by a bipartisan vote 64 to 1 over the objections of Congressman Jerry Nadler. He is one of the elected officials who joined Hoylman-Sigal in complaining about how Amtrak was managing the Penn Station project.