[NYguy]

Originally Posted by JSsocal

No the best hope of moving the arena is to the postal sorting facility on 9th-10th ave.

That's not a hope at all, because that facility isn't moving anywhere. That's why we have the Farley building to work with in the first place, because operations were moved there.




Getting into Vornado's thinking on development, I've always suspected they were part of Cuomo's plan, and in fact have been in the middle of most of the development plans for the area. I don't know if Cuomo and de Blasio's silly tit for tat feud will slow down any part of an approvals process that will already be time consuming. The plan hasn't been announced yet, and there will have to be an environmental review - itself taking months - before the 7 month approval process could even begin.

http://therealdeal.com/2016/11/01/vornado-post-roth/

November 01, 2016
By Hiten Samtani and Will Parker


More than a decade ago, Vornado and Related were tapped to redevelop the Farley Post Office into a train hall. The partners turned around and proposed something bolder: a $14 billion redevelopment that would have also transplanted Madison Square Garden across the street and replaced it with two skyscrapers, one taller than the Empire State building, and ten million square feet of office space. Then, in 2008, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in the wake of his prostitution scandal, and plans for the new station and stadium were shelved.

“It just broke our hearts,” Roth said at a Columbia University talk in 2010. “Every time you go into Penn Station you should be a little bitter. Spit on the floor.”

By early 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had pushed Vornado and Related out of the project altogether. But this September, Cuomo brought them back in the fold for a scaled-down version of the plan. In collaboration with the construction firm Skanska, the two developers will transform the Beaux Arts-style Farley Post Office into a train hall for the Long Island Rail Road, adding hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space along the way. The partners are expected to invest $600 million in the $1.6 billion project, which is slated for completion by 2020.

“We’re at the size now where [Roth] doesn’t need me and I don’t need him,” Related’s Ross told TRD in October. “But when we do something we do it because it works for both of us. And the fact is, we trust each other and we don’t let ego stand in the way of doing something, because certainly we both have the size and scale to do anything.”

A modernized Penn Station would be a boon to Vornado’s Penn Plaza bets. But observers question whether it could ever compete for top-tier tenants with Hudson Yards, which has signed the likes of L’Oreal, SAP, KKR and Time Warner.

Vornado, naturally, would like to get in on what Related has done so far in the Hudson Yards. But Related had help with a rezoning, something the City hasn't done so far on the area, and Cuomo attempted to bypass with his earlier proposal for control of the area.

https://therealdeal.com/2017/05/23/c...on-task-force/

Cuomo taps Roth, LeFrak for Penn Station task force
Governor recommends booting Amtrak and having the state take over

By Kathryn Brenzel
May 23, 2017


Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday tapped Richard LeFrak, Steve Roth and others to serve on a task force dedicated to addressing myriad issues at Penn Station — including its management.

A key step to resolving issues at the busy station, according to the governor, is booting Amtrak. During an event at the City University of New York, Cuomo proposed shifting control of Penn Station to either the state, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey or a private “qualified operator.” In the first scenario, the state would use design-build authorization and work with the private sector to make repairs and operate the station.

Cuomo has since then selected the team to develop Farley (no surprise, Vornado & Related). But that still leaves the development of the Penn Station area - Vornado's plan for building.



http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...alert-20180402

By Daniel Geiger
April 2, 2018


Representatives of Cuomo, who is up for re-election this year, said the bill that leaked to the public was merely a draft. They insisted that the state was not seeking unilateral control of the station and its neighborhood. Still, the seeming attempt to grab nearly unfettered control over the project spurred widespread condemnation from city officials, prompting the governor to back off.

While the notion of creating a legal framework to eliminate local elected officials’ input was unpopular enough, part of the backlash could be credited to Cuomo’s failure to articulate what should be done to fix Penn Station.

“The governor wants enormously sweeping powers to do almost anything he wants,” Gottfried said. “But it’s not entirely clear what the consequences of that might be.”

Cuomo has floated more ambitious ideas, such as relocating the Garden’s Hulu Theater and reconfiguring the western edge of Penn Station into a grand entrance with huge glass panes. That also has failed to come to fruition, in part because Amtrak, which owns the transit hub, controls that area.

Meanwhile, as planners continue to argue whether the Garden should be relocated as part of a big fix, Vornado has floated a new plan that would leverage its nearby real estate holdings to address several of the station’s shortcomings.