NEW YORK | Empire Station District | 9 Towers (18-20 msf)| FT | FLOORS

[NYguy]

Somebody tell them....



https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/10/21/23415476/penn-station-community-197a-plan-against-hochul

Penn Station Neighbors Set Out to Create Their Own Area Plan to Counter Hochul’s
Community Board 5 resolves to reenvision the blocks targeted for demolition and megatowers under a steamroller state project.



Layla Law-Gisiko speaks during a rally Monday against the Penn Station area development plans.


BY GABRIEL POBLETE
OCT 21, 2022

Local residents and business owners who oppose Gov. Kathy Hochul’s looming Penn Station-area redevelopment plan and its megatowers are trying a new tack in their resistance: coming up with a proposal of their own.

The New York City Charter allows community boards to create their own land use agendas for an area, known as 197-a plans. Unlike Hochul’s state-controlled Penn project, it would have to go through the city’s land use review process. Manhattan’s Community Board 5 is considering doing just that.

Last week, CB5 passed a resolution committing to create a zoning framework for “a cohesive future” in the North Chelsea and Penn Station area. The board intends to address concepts board members contend have not been seriously considered by the state, including the possibility of moving Madison Square Garden, the famed arena atop Penn Station whose city permit expires in 2023.

“We’ve told the governor what we thought of the plan that they spearheaded. We were really genuinely hoping that they would take our comments into account and incorporate it into their plan so that it is a plan that could be acceptable to the community,” said Layla Law-Gisiko, chairperson of Community Board 5’s Land Use Committee who ran for State Assembly earlier this year to fight the Penn-area plan. “And that didn’t happen.”

The community board committed to creating a working group of board members, local residents, businesses and other stakeholders, civic groups and experts. It will consider invoking Article 197-a to allow the board to create its own development plans.

Theirs is a bankshot, in hopes of influencing change. If they do go ahead and craft a 197-a plan, it will have to go through a process that includes approval by the City Council — a political seal of approval — but the plan itself is only advisory.

It could also come too late to change the course of already-in-motion plans by the state agency Empire State Development (ESD) to take over properties surrounding Penn Station via purchase or use of eminent domain. ESD claims the area is “blighted,” allowing the state to override local development rules.

The ESD board approved the general contours of Hochul’s plan to raise funds to drastically revamp the neighborhood around Penn Station. Her plan allows for 18 million square feet of mixed-space development around the country’s most visited — and possibly most detested — transit hub.

Hochul’s Penn Station plan uses a financial scheme known as payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, to capture tax dollars from developers of eight sites surrounding Penn Station, while giving developers increased building capacity at the sites.

Community Board 5’s move to create its own plan, previously reported by the West Side Spirit, comes as CB5 members have criticized the Hochul plan for not being comprehensive and not seriously contemplating the removal of Madison Square Garden.

The resolution asserts the plan will aim to be fiscally sound and will address transportation, transit and infrastructure needs in the area, focusing on growth while not displacing existing residents.

“CB5 believes that although this area is of critical importance for the region and for the nation, the local community is best suited to spearhead and design a plan to address the multiple needs, and work with all stakeholders,” the resolution states.

“If there had been community buy-in, we wouldn’t be where we are. If there had been proper outreach, transparency, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Law-Gisiko said. “We take no pleasure in wasting our time screaming at the state.”

ommunity boards and other sponsors have succeeded in getting 13 197-a plans adopted since the city’s 1989 charter reform, according to the Department of Planning’s website. Enacting a 197-a includes an environmental review as well as votes from the City Planning Commission and Council.

Tom Angotti, professor emeritus at Hunter College’s Urban Policy and Planning department, had been part of the citywide task force that successfully pushed for 197-a plans to be adopted in the charter. He said that while such plans are unlikely to get implemented outright, they give communities with little leverage a role in decision-making.

“A plan can be one element in supporting an alternative that will demonstrate the infeasibility and the unreality of the plan that the state has developed,” Angotti said.

Angotti noted, however, that the monthslong Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) process could bog down the Penn-area alternative plan — and noted that the 197-a plan for Williamsburg took over 12 years to develop.

Even then, the major Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning in 2005, which has since brought high-rise luxury development to the waterfront, went against some of the major recommendations of the 197-a plan, which emphasized the need to preserve industrial jobs in the longtime manufacturing area.

[JMKeynes]

I really can’t stand that chick.

[NYguy]

Always know that its always about the towers. No towers, and nobody cares.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/nyregion/nyc-penn-station-construction-project.html

Why New York State Insists That the Penn Station Area Is ‘Blighted’
The designation gives Gov. Kathy Hochul authority to transform the Manhattan neighborhood and build 10 skyscrapers there. A lawsuit is challenging her claim.


By Matthew Haag and Patrick McGeehanPhotographs by Benjamin Norman
Dec. 29, 2022

The congested, chaotic section of Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station, which teems with tourists, commuters and shoppers, is undeniably drab. Does that make it blighted?

New York State has decreed that it is, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently likened the Penn Station area to “a Skid Row neighborhood.” She was defending the controversial plan to allow developers to build 10 towers around the decrepit train station — the busiest transit hub in the nation — in exchange for some of the $7 billion the state needs to renovate it.

If New York State officials deem an urban area to be “blighted,” blocks can be bulldozed and people and businesses can be forced to relocate. And new towers — unbound by limits on size and height as defined by the city’s normal planning rules — can rise.

The state’s authority to make such a determination and move forward with redevelopment is nearly impossible to contest.

Its ability to intervene was meant to ensure that neglected areas do not languish. But critics say that officials have long abused the power to pry private properties away from their owners, and they accuse Ms. Hochul of continuing the practice with the Penn Station redevelopment project.

Over the years, the state has used the blighted designation to redevelop swaths of New York City. The move was used to clear properties in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, for the Barclays Center; to clean up the banks of the East River to create the Brooklyn Bridge Park; and to condemn a section of Times Square, including adult clubs, as part of a lengthy effort to rebuild and sanitize the district.

More recently, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo employed it to create Moynihan Train Hall in Midtown and argued for its use in the Penn Station project before he resigned in August 2021, with his successor, Ms. Hochul, continuing the redevelopment.

Opponents of the Penn Station project, which include a West 30th Street tenants association and the City Club, a civic group, have filed a lawsuit to halt the plan. Community Board 5, which represents the district, said that characterizing the area “as a slum or blight” was offensive and “grossly inaccurate.”

“Blighted is in the eye of the beholder,” said Tom Angotti, professor emeritus of urban policy and planning at Hunter College. “What’s blighted in your eyes could be a perfectly functioning building and neighborhood in mine.”

The Penn Station neighborhood changes block by block. There are souvenir shops, a McDonald’s on Seventh Avenue that is one of the city’s oldest, a 1,500-spot parking garage and a 19th-century Roman Catholic church. It is home to Apple’s largest office in New York City.

The station itself, with its cavernous underground space, has long attracted homeless people. Last year, a survey by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority found that the vast majority of homeless people in the entire subway system seek shelter in just eight stations, including Penn Station.

For the Penn Station project, state officials have staked their claims of blight on “substandard and insanitary conditions” and “economic stagnation.” The evidence to support those claims was outlined in a neighborhood study commissioned by Empire State Development, the agency overseeing the project and facing the lawsuit from its opponents, and completed by a civil engineering firm in February 2021.

In the 240-page neighborhood report, the firm explored the exterior and interior conditions of every property in the redevelopment area, assigning ratings for each site. The buildings were found to be older, with many built before 1932, and generating lower rental revenue than their peers in surrounding neighborhoods.

Across the redevelopment area, only one building received the worst rating of “critical condition,” a property with damaged and missing windows, cracked walls and eight unresolved building violations. It is 232 West 31st Street, a four-story service building for Penn Station that is owned by Amtrak.

Some properties with faulty conditions or unresolved violations are owned by Vornado Realty Trust, the neighborhood’s largest landowner, which the state has said will develop some of the new towers. Vornado, a public company that is among the city’s largest owners of offices, has accumulated more than a dozen properties in the area over the last 20 years, holding onto them in anticipation of a larger redevelopment.

Of the eight sites that would be redeveloped, Vornado owns four of them and a share of another. The sites could give rise to some of the tallest buildings in the city.

Over the years, state projects aimed at eradicating blight have been criticized for rewarding developers whose properties had seemingly contributed to it. A decade ago, critics of a state project in which Columbia University would expand into Manhattanville pointed out that the university owned a large majority of the sites that were later designated as blighted.

The Penn Station project received the first approval in July that it needed from the state’s three-member Public Authorities Control Board. But the board would have to unanimously approve additional parts of the project for it to move forward. One of its members, State Senator LeRoy Comrie, a Democrat, said in an interview that he had concerns about the development and urged Ms. Hochul to redesign it.

[The New York Lion]

The lawsuit will lose and this area will be magnificent in 15-20 years.

This part of the skyline will visually merge the East and West side together with a sea of 1,000 foot skyscrapers.

It will be amazing.

The woman who compared this to Tour Montparnasse is off her rocker.

Luckily she lost her election.

[NYguy]

https://nypost.com/2023/01/02/nyt-omits-condemnation-history-in-penn-station-nyc-report/

NYT’s Penn Station area report conveniently omits own condemnation history


By Steve Cuozzo
January 2, 2023

Convenient to Forget Dept.:

The New York Times, reporting on controversy over whether the term “blighted” truly describes the bustling neighborhood around Penn Station, left out the Times Company’s own messy history in the annals of disputed condemnations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to raze several blocks around Penn Station and Madison Square Garden to make room for new office towers that supposedly would pay for a “new” Penn Station.

The Times cited some furiously contested past uses of eminent domain — such as for Barclays Center in Brooklyn, for Columbia University in West Harlem, and “a section of Times Square… as part of a lengthy effort to rebuild and sanitize the district.”

But guess what the story didn’t mention? That an entire Eighth Avenue blockfront fell to state condemnation soon after 2000 — when scores of viable stores, businesses and residents were evicted — to make way for the Times’ own new headquarters tower between West 40th and 41st Streets.

Those seizures were entirely separate from the Times Square condemnations that preceded it.

The land-grab was opposed by many landlords and tenants although the Times, its development partner Bruce Ratner and the state prevailed in court.

The Times’ numerous editorials opposing “corporate welfare” never mention the breaks that the company and Ratner enjoyed — nor the lowball price the Times and Ratner were allowed to pay those who were evicted.

[NYguy]

MSG’s permit renewal…

[JMKeynes]

The city should deny it and start taxing the sh.it out of MSG.

[colemonkee]

Or at least add a rider that nullifies their right to lease if they use facial recognition software to deny anyone access to the property.

[NYguy]

The thing is, the City benefits from Madison Square Garden being there as much or more so than the Dolans. They call it the world’s most famous arena for a reason, and it’s not for its looks.

[NYguy]

As we know, the area between 2 Penn and MSG will be opened up to allow daylight into Penn Station as it is reconfigured into a one level station.

While designs are currently in the works (bids were received), we get an idea of what it could look like from the conceptual renderings...







Meanwhile, with Madison Square Garden's permit renewal underway, we get an idea of how they will reconfigure the loading area to accommodate this, as well as some background on why an arena is allowed to operate on site in the first place.



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[NYguy]

As part of the permit renewal, the City plans to require MSG to upgrade the open areas around the arena to suitable public spaces. However, considering the crowds, lines, and need for circulation space around the arena (for both Penn Station and MSG), I see this as ill-advised.































By the way, for the people who are yelling about all of the displacement (likely they've newer walked the blocks), the area in green, as it's currently configured...

[GertElim]

https://www.instagram.com/p/Co7pnpMOYvt/

What is happening on Site 4?

[NYguy]

This is directly south of site 1, which is expected to be residential…


https://rew-online.com/300-west-30th-str...g-new-development-building-in-manhattan/

300 West 30th Street in the Penn District is the top-selling and fastest-selling new development building in Manhattan


by REW
March 20, 2023

Since launching sales late last year, 300 West 30th Street, featuring luxurious new condominium residences in The Penn District, is the fast-selling building in Manhattan with the most contracts signed of any new development in Manhattan so far in 2023. [Source: Corcoran Market Research, public documents available from NYS AG office, and REBNY RLS].

According to developer Hiwin Group USA, construction on the building is now complete, and closings are anticipated this spring.

Located in the thriving Penn District at the crossroads of Midtown, Hudson Yards, and Chelsea, 300 West 30th Street offers 69 new condominium residences with visionary interior design by Workshop/APD that creates a boutique hotel ambiance by blending elegant, minimal interiors with the dramatic custom details and textures.

“There are a lot of superlatives in real estate, but reaching the 50% sold milestone at 300 West 30th Street in less than four months is especially exciting,” said John Felicetti, Vice President of Corcoran New Development. “Our developer client Hiwin had tremendous vision when they selected this site, but their detail and execution drives buyers to move forward and purchase at the first luxury condo in the Penn District. The building looks incredible, and the Corcoran team is excited to complete the final 50% of sales and welcome our first residents.”

“Everyone knows that The Penn District is a centrally located tech hub, but after the impressive early interest and rapid sales at 300 West 30th Street, the area cannot be underestimated as one of the city’s most important neighborhoods. The area is evolving with the opening of Two Manhattan West and the High Line extension on 30th Street this Spring, and long-term in ways that are very meaningful to buyers,” says Aleksey Gavrilov of the Gavrilov Grosso Team at The Corcoran Group, which heads up sales and marketing with Corcoran New Development. Joseph added, “Our team was engaged from the onset of the product design stage and worked alongside the interior design and architectural teams to create this beautiful product. It is very fulfilling knowing that 300 West 30th St is one of the fastest selling developments in Manhattan.”

[NYguy]

This article doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we’ve seen a version of this MSG plan before….


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/nyregion/penn-station-hochul-nyc.html

Plan B for Fixing Penn Station Would Wrap Madison Square Garden in Glass
The previous proposal to help pay for the renovation of the station, which could cost up to $10 billion in state funds, has been shelved.





By Dana Rubinstein and Stefanos Chen
March 28, 2023

The proposal from a subsidiary of the Italian firm ASTM Group calls for the construction of a rectangular glass station around Madison Square Garden. The Garden would be covered in aluminum and steel, and two new light-filled train halls would replace the notoriously cramped and dark station — all of which could be completed by 2030, the firm has said.

Ms. Hochul, who has indicated that she is open to alternatives to the state’s partnership with Vornado Realty Trust — the firm expected to lead redevelopment around the station — has not publicly weighed in on the new proposal, but it has piqued the interest of elected officials and local community groups.

The governor is not obliged to pick an alternative proposal, and Vornado officials say they hope to continue with their agreement. While the Vornado plan has been abandoned in the short-term, it could be revived if economic conditions improve.

The new proposal is being spearheaded by two well-connected political operators: Patrick J. Foye, a former chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; and Peter Cipriano, a former senior infrastructure adviser to Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary during the Trump administration.

Mr. Foye now works as chief executive of ASTM North America, a subsidiary of the Italian infrastructure firm that specializes in public-private partnerships, and Mr. Cipriano is the group’s senior vice president.
Both men have spent much of March marketing their proposal to elected officials and civic leaders in the Penn Station area, and MSG Entertainment, which operates the Garden, said it is open to the plans, according to sources familiar with the talks.

“ As we’ve said, we are always open to discussions,” said an MSG spokeswoman. “As invested members of our community, we are deeply committed to improving Penn Station and the surrounding area, and we continue to collaborate closely with a wide range of stakeholders to advance this shared goal.”

To build a grand, street-level entrance for the new Penn Station, ASTM would demolish the Theater at MSG, a 5,600-person venue near the Eighth Avenue side of the complex. The Madison Square Garden arena itself would be surrounded by a roughly 90-foot-tall glass podium designed to mirror the dimensions of the Beaux-Arts-style James A. Farley Building across the street.

Inside, the Eighth Avenue hall would have 55-foot ceilings above the new passenger concourse and a mix of retail and waiting areas and possibly a homeless outreach center. All 21 tracks would be accessible from the new halls, with additional staircases, elevators and escalators.
A new mid-block train hall, which would abut an office building at 2 Penn Plaza, would be wrapped in a 100-foot-tall glass enclosure, creating a sunny arcade for pedestrians moving between West 31st and 33rd Streets.

ASTM has said its cost projection will not be ready until June — when it had been planning to unveil the proposal — but has argued the project will cost significantly less than the original plan. Proponents of the new proposal add that it would not prevent Vornado, which would remain a large landowner in the Penn Station district, from developing the area in the future.

The company and its equity partners would pay for the upfront costs of construction and any cost overruns. They would then manage and operate the station for 50 years, according to people familiar with the proposal. Amtrak, which owns the station, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New Jersey Transit, its biggest users, would repay ASTM over time, relying on their own capital resources as well as federal funds.

“Amtrak looks forward to hearing more from ASTM and their proposal for Penn Station as part of the project development process for Penn Reconstruction,” said a spokesman for Amtrak.

[madrian]

So does that mean the skyscrapers around Penn Station are shelved as well?

Edit: Never mind I see the part where they say that Vornado could still develop the area in the future.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by madrian

So does that mean the skyscrapers around Penn Station are shelved as well?

Edit: Never mind I see the part where they say that Vornado could still develop the area in the future.

No. Just poor reporting. The NY Times is a major newspaper, so, you would expect better. But we’ve been following this development, so I can clear it up.

First thing, there are 2 separate things going on at Penn Station - the rebuilding/improvement of the current station, and the expansion of the station to the blocks immediately south. The income from the towers (that would otherwise go to NYC taxes) was always meant to help finance the expansion. That’s why it was always clarified under Cuomo that this project was independent of the rebuilding of the current station. Governor Hochul, for some reason, decided she would rope it all in together. Maybe she thought it would help people better understand what’s going on, but its just the opposite. There were no towers planned to begin anytime soon, except for 15 Penn, which was on deck before any of this. The rest of the towers woukd be phased in over a couple of decades.

The rebuilding of the current station is set to begin sometime this year (they said as early as this summer). But the expansion, which is a separate project, is undergoing federal environmental review. They haven’t officially declared those blocks south, so any purchase/designation/rfp for those sites can’t move forward until then.

[Busy Bee]

Make no big plans. They have no funding to stir men's blood...

[Busy Bee]

Also that wrap design makes the block look a little less like a normal toilet and more like one of those fancy new boxy smart toilets.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Also that wrap design makes the block look a little less like a normal toilet and more like one of those fancy new boxy smart toilets.

I don't know why they even presented that graphic. It will just turn people off even more. You need finely detailed renderings to even have an audience.
It'll likely never see the light of day, but remember, removing the Hulu Theater was always a possibility, just not one the railroads made a priority.







We're back down that road again...this was Extell's proposal.















A vision from the Municipal Art Society...



https://stewartmader.com/a-viable-plan-for-penn-station/

[NYguy]

A little bit more from the Post...


https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/designers-...ion-overhaul-with-help-from-ex-mta-boss/

The plan shares a several major features with the current one. It would keep Madison Square Garden above the Penn Station, but clads the base in glass.

The designs show that the Hulu Theater, which is owned by MSG, would be demolished to make way for a grand new entrance to the station on the Eight Avenue side, across the street from Moynihan Train Hall.

Illustrations also show the designers also aim to build a new entrance into the complex between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the space that was once occupied by a cab stand and now sits largely unused. The new design appears to be scaled back from the one initially proposed by the MTA.

This proposal does not currently include the MTA’s planned underground walkway that would finally link Penn Station directly to the nearby Herald Square subway station, which a major hub for the N/Q/R/W and B/D/F/M lines, a spokesman confirmed.

The biggest change proposed by Foye and the Italians, however, appears to be nixing the MTA’s current plans to overhaul and expand the usually crowded entrances to Penn Station from the Seventh Avenue side.

That change left MTA officials leery, though they said they were still awaiting a full briefing from ASTM.

“We look forward to a full briefing on these concepts,” said MTA spokesman John McCarthy. “However, we remain concerned that the proposal, as described so far, lacks key elements of the Master Plan agreed to by Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and MTA.”

Midblock concourse between MSG and 2 Penn...






Removal of Hulu Theater...