NEW YORK | Penn Station / MSG Renovation

[ChiND]

This isn't a political issue for me. Trump can make this happen. $7b is nothing to the federal government. I'm a New Yorker first and foremost and would love to see this forlorn neighborhood get redeveloped.

[ChiND]

Tartarus


NycCorners,com

Mount Olympus

Grand Penn Alliance

[ChiND]

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/new-york-penn-railway-station-restoration-wfq8h8rts

Plans to pull New York’s Penn Station out of the circles of hell
Are the old glories of North America’s busiest railway terminal to be restored? Hopes rest partly on the unlikely figure of President Trump

Will Pavia
Sunday May 18 2025

But his administration recently took control of a $7 billion project to redevelop the station, and he has declared, in an executive order, that all new federal buildings should demonstrate a respect for “classical architectural heritage”.

Justin Shubow, who headed a federal advisory commission on architecture during Trump’s first term, had a hand in drafting the order. He is president of a non-profit called the National Civic Art Society, which is calling for “a new classical station, evocative of the original,” he says over the phone from Washington DC. “It would speak to the direction of American civilisation in the same way that the reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris reflected on French civilisation.”

The proposal he supports has been drawn up by an architect named Alexandros Washburn for a group called the Grand Penn Community Alliance, which is funded by a prominent Trump donor and has held meetings with Trump’s transport department.....

There is now a skyscraper on stilts at what would be the front of the station. But stilts supporting the bottom of this building are at exactly the height of the original façade, Washburn says. His plan involves rebuilding the façade, using some pieces of the original that have turned up in the Midwest. There are allegorical Day and Night statues, there are 13 eagles. “You simply can bring in the pieces of the old station and fabricate the ones that are missing,” he says.

Passing beneath the skyscraper, you would enter a hall, roofed by high arches of glass. Between that and the Moynihan Train Hall, stretching over the railway tracks would be a public park. Waiting for a train, “we could be basking under dappled sunshine”, he says.

[ChiND]

The new train hall, unencumbered by the arena, could double the station’s capacity to 48 trains per hour, provide a suite of new safety and accessibility features and address riders’ biggest complaints about the cramped station, said Alexandros Washburn, who is leading the project for Grand Penn Community Alliance.

The huge skylight between the park and the train hall would be amazing. It appears that there's a huge waterfall in this plan also.



https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/nyregion/penn-station-madison-square-garden.html


https://www.archpaper.com/2023/06/commun...tion-ahead-of-detailed-renovation-plans/

[ChiND]

With the appointment of Andy Byford to lead this project, it appears that we will get through-running. To facilitate its implementation,he has supported moving MSG.

Byford has said it would be preferable to move the Garden, but whether he or his onetime developer boss, the President, can assemble a deal that appeals to Dolan is down the track.

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/07/28/quick-note-andy-byford-and-through-running/

https://www.ourtownny.com/news/exclusive...elopment-plan-for-penn-station-HC4620797

Here’s a through-running proposal with a relocated MSG.

https://www.org/faqs

However, fixing the platforms is extremely difficult and expensive as long as Madison Square Garden is on top of Penn Station because the support columns for the arena are drilled into the platforms. Any project would need to shore up MSG as it reworks Penn Station's foundational structures, an engineering feat of ballet-level precision lest you bring the arena crashing down onto the tracks.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/21/deep-dive-how-will-sean-duffy-fix-penn-station

Apparently, Byford has been calling for the removal of the MSG albatross for quite some time. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this [garbage]!”

[QUOTE] Byford said it would be ideal to remove all the pillars that hold up Madison Square Garden, and cramp already narrow platforms. [QUOTE]

https://www.otdowntown.com/news/byford-u...to-run-on-one-another-s-tracks-DF2645162

[ChiND]

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/05/28/byford-build-penn-big-beautiful/

[ChiND]

It will be an unparalleled travesty if all that we get is, at best, an Eighth Avenue entrance where the theatre is presently located and remain stuck with the worst arena in sports crushing Penn with the oppressive, tormenting weight of Dante’s nine circles of hell and a perennially empty, massive, dystopian lot where the Hotel Penn once stood.

Bringing more trains to a vile, execrable, overcrowded station in a decrepit area is absurd.

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transporta...chester-properties-metro-north-expansion

May 28, 2025 03:12 PM
MTA moves to acquire 18 Bronx, Westchester properties for Metro-North expansion
CAROLINE SPIVACK

This depressing prospect would warrant an expedition by Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss.


Alamy

The twenty-first century version of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell.


Getty Images

[NYguy]

The MSG Transportation Management Plan winds its way through City approval.


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[ChiND]

If MSG stays, it will be like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.”

Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.

Will Byford liberate Penn from the Albatross around its neck?

https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/1928557387230650878

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by ChiND

If MSG stays, it will be like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.”



Will Byford liberate Penn from the Albatross around its neck?

https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/1928557387230650878

I don't know why you keep confusing Penn Station with MSG. The station itself is underground.

MSG is on the upper levels, above the theater. The bulk of Penn Station traffic is on the 7th Avenue end, where 2 Penn Plaza sits. That's why even MSG has it's main entrance on 7th, despite being more visible on 8th. 8th Avenue is basically the backdoor to Penn Station.

They could remove the theater to create a new opening, but that would involve spending unnecessary dollars to buy the theater for a cool $1 Billion, money needed to make improvements to the station itself, and has no bearing on the real problems at Penn. And also, they're trying to reduce the costs.

[ChiND]

I know Penn and MSG very well. If the golden opportunity to fix this mess is missed, the state should revoke MSG’s tax exemption and withhold the permanent operating permit.

[ChiND]

I’m very curious as to what the plan is.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/02/sean-andys-excellent-penn-tour/

Sean & Andy’s excellent Penn tour: Secretary Duffy and Train Daddy Byford get down to busines

[Busy Bee]

_________

[ChiND]

Can anyone open this?

https://commercialobserver.com/2025/06/new-york-office-demand-transportation-andy-byford/

New York’s Office Market Could Win Big With Andy Byford
The well-respected ex-NYC Transit president is now heading Penn Station's redevelopment in an era when easy commutes are a major workplace amenity

BY AARON SHORT JUNE 9, 2025 12:00 PM

[NYguy]

https://www.nj.com/news/2025/07/workers-...tunnels-face-sweltering-summer-heat.html

Workers racing to build the Hudson River rail tunnels face sweltering summer heat


Jul. 09, 2025

In the year since the Hudson River rail tunnel project got its record-breaking $6.8 billion federal grant, armies of workers spread across five locations have battled extreme weather and the realities of urban construction as they build the $16 billion Gateway tunnel.

Most of the work by the 11,200 construction workers, who have faced sweltering heat and freezing cold, has been out of the public view.

The workers are the stagehands and set builders preparing for the big show that will be the first tunnel drilling project under the Hudson River in over a century.

The worksites vary: From rock drilling at the soaring Palisades in North Bergen to hammering out a deep, giant trench wedged between Hudson Yards that is crisscrossed by the historic High Line elevated walking trail.
And one project isn’t even on land, it’s in an artificial rectangular dam created in the middle of a turbulent Hudson River.

“When it’s done, we’ll have four good-as-new tubes to serve for the next 100 years,” said Steve Sigmund, Gateway Development Commission spokesperson. “Ten mega projects will be made into one.”

by Ed Murray


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[mrnyc]

incredibly impressive work.

[ChiND]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMGNiUlODiH/?igsh=MW5zb3R0ZGI1NHQyOA==

[NYguy]

• Video Link

[ChiND]

https://www.cityandstateny.com/personality/2025/07/andy-byford-penn-stations-transformation/406846/

Andy Byford on Penn Station’s ‘transformation’
The first interview with New York City’s “Train Daddy” since he took on the job of redeveloping the much-maligned transit hub.

By RALPH R. ORTEGA | JULY 18, 2025 04:29 PM ET

Andy Byford, the former president of the New York City Transit Authority better known as New York City’s “Train Daddy,” has a new job as special advisor to the Amtrak Board of Directors for the redevelopment of New York Penn Station. That is welcome news to advocates who are calling for a bold reconstruction of the transit hub that harks back to the grandeur of the original Penn Station, which fell to the wrecking ball in 1963, only to be replaced by the much-maligned underground station that is today home to Amtrak, NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road.

[ChiND]

https://www.westsidespirit.com/news/trai...ts-now-in-penn-station-rebuild-LN4852827

‘Train Daddy’ Byford: “Hard Part Starts Now” in Penn Station Rebuild
Andy Byford, in his first pubic utterances since he was tapped by President Trump to head up the rebuilding of Penn Station for Amtrak, said rather than “reconstruction” he is planning for “transformation.” But he’s talking to all sides.
MICHAEL ORESKES | 18 JUL 2025 | 06:17