NEW YORK | Penn Station / MSG Renovation

[Busy Bee]

Time will tell.

[mrnyc]

follow the $ —



Madison Square Garden PAC Funds Council Members Who’ll Vote on Arena’s Future

By Gabriel Poblete, The City
Posted on September 6, 2023


The company that owns Madison Square Garden has donated the maximum dollars allowed to more than a dozen City Council campaigns, while the Council readies to vote on the Midtown arena’s permit and weighs a bill that would end its controversial use of facial recognition technology.


more:
https://www.amny.com/news/madison-sq...uncil-members/

[mrnyc]

Business

Manhattan officials want The Theater at MSG razed to make way for Penn Station grand hall

By Max Parrott
Posted on September 12, 2023


Tear down this theater!

That was the message from two Manhattan elected officials Tuesday as they called for the demolition of The Theater at Madison Square Garden to open up space for a grander redesign of Penn Station.


more:
https://www.amny.com/nation/the-thea...nd-hall-plans/


Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, Congress Member Jerry Nadler, Assembly Members Tony Simone and Daniel O’Donnell, and City Council Member Erik Bottcher speak outside The Theater at MSG on Sept. 12, 2023.
Photo courtesy of Manhattan Borough President’s office

[NYguy]

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transp...struction-plan

Judge rules in favor of state’s Penn Station reconstruction plan

AARON ELSTEIN
September 20, 2023

The Hochul administration’s plan to help pay for reconstructing Penn Station by having 10 supertall towers built around it survived a test in court after a judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by community groups.

Penn Community Defense Fund, the City Club of New York and two other plaintiffs had alleged Empire State Development acted arbitrarily and capriciously. They contended the state agency failed to assess how much revenue would be contributed to Penn Station from the new towers and that officials rolled over to the wishes of Vornado Realty Trust, the firm that seeks to redevelop the area near the dismal commuter hub.

But in order to derail the plan, the plaintiffs had to demonstrate ESD acted without a legal basis for its decisions and they failed to do so, state Judge Lucy Billings said in a ruling released Tuesday. She added the law “unambiguously allows” state officials to defer questions about the project’s financial details to some undetermined date.

Richard Emery, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he disagreed with the judge’s decision and is weighing an appeal.

“Very unfortunately, the laws in the books don’t provide a safeguard that good public policy deserves,” said Layla Law-Gisiko, chair of the land use committee for Community Board 5, who opposes the state’s plan.

[NYguy]

The person who wrote this article doesn't understand that part of the environmental review is to look at the alternatives - in this case there are 3 "options" - before moving forward with the preferred alternative. Everyone knows the expansion will be south, but the alternatives have to be looked at anyway. Only when the "preferred alternative" is announced will it become official.

Keep that in mind when reading through this. None of this is new.



https://nypost.com/2023/09/19/penn-s...-plans-reveal/

Penn Station expansion could balloon beyond single block, hit whopping $16.7B, new plans reveal


By Nolan Hicks
Sep. 19, 2023

The MTA’s controversial plan to demolish a block of Midtown to expand Penn Station has grown even larger and $4 billion more expensive — with a price tag that could now approach $17 billion, records show.

Newly revised schematics reviewed by The Post call for a terminal that would be far larger than the massive $11 billion one just dug under Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal for the new Long Island Rail Road station — a project that ran so late and over budget it became a poster child for mismanagement.

The new Pennsylvania Station is being designed to fit extra trains to run under the Hudson River after the completion of the $16 billion Gateway Project. That project involves the construction of a new tunnel linking New York and New Jersey and refurbishing existing century-old Penn tracks that were badly damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

Originally, plans were to build an eight-track extension that would be largely confined to one block and carry an estimated price tag of $13 billion.

But the 200-plus-page revised Penn Station engineering document — developed in coordination with Amtrak and New Jersey Transit — lays out three new plans for the expansion.

The first proposal would dig a cavern to build a 12-track station that would be split across two levels — and be 50% larger than the LIRR’s Grand Central Madison station — at an estimated cost of $16.7 billion.

The project would be mostly contained within the block between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 30th to 31st streets.

But the proposed 12-track station would no longer fit with the connections that are supposed to link it to the new Hudson River tunnel being built as part of the Gateway project, forcing officials to spend more than $280 million to redo the work.

The second proposal calls for a new nine-track station that would be split across two levels. It would allow the MTA to use the existing tunnels linking the station to the Gateway tunnel.

But the document warns that the nine-track proposal would likely sprawl well beyond Seventh Avenue to the east — potentially a third of the way to Sixth Avenue.

“[The station] would be located primarily … between Seventh and Eighth avenues and between West 30th and West 31st streets,” it states. “The station area would extend under these streets and would also occupy [the block between 30th and 31st streets and Eighth and Ninth avenues] to the west and more of [the block between 30th and 31st streets and Sixth and Seventh avenues] east of Seventh Avenue.”

That plan would cost an estimated $12.3 billion.

The third proposal would build a 10-track terminal to the north of Penn Station, beneath Herald Square — contained in the block bound by Sixth and Seventh Avenues between 33rd and 34th streets, which currently contains a Target and an H&M.

It would cost an estimated $15.6 billion.

Officials are believed to favor the first two proposals, to the immediate south of Penn Station, over the Herald Square plan.

The project’s outside consultants and designers justify the station’s ballooning size with an extraordinary assumption: This modern multibillion-dollar facility will be less efficient than the current century-old Penn Station complex.

It assumes that trains will spend an average of 22 minutes at each platform, which is more than double the time currently needed by the LIRR or New Jersey Transit to board and disembark.

Increasing the amount of time a train spends at a platform increases the number of platforms a station needs to handle more trains to fit its schedule.

A schematic of a new Penn Station expansion plan includes a 12-track station at a whopping cost of $16.7 billion.





This second proposal for Penn Station’s expansion would have two levels as well, but not be stacked on top of each other, thus requiring more land.





The third proposal would build a 10-track station to the north and east of the current Penn Station between Sixth and Seventh avenues and 33rd and 34th streets. A portion of it would tuck in beneath the Herald Square Macy’s.






These renderings from the MTA show what the current Penn Station complex would look like after its current proposed $7 billion renovation of the facility. The plan, however, would not increase capacity through the current station complex.

[NYguy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/n...son-river.html

New Phase of Gateway Tunnel Project in Hudson River to Begin
Work on the long-delayed rail tunnel is set to speed up this month, as Senator Chuck Schumer announces an additional $3.8 billion in federal funding.





By Patrick McGeehan
Nov. 3, 2023

Construction of the long-delayed rail tunnel under the Hudson River is about to speed up, as the project gets an additional $3.8 billion in federal funding.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, announced the latest grant on Friday, just before he and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, proclaimed that work would start this month on the next phase of the $16.1 billion tunnel known as the Gateway project.

The new, early phase of the project involves building a concrete casing on Manhattan’s West Side for trains to pass through under Hudson Yards, between the river’s edge and Pennsylvania Station.

On the New Jersey side of the river, work is also scheduled to begin this month on the realignment of a highway so that the digging of the tunnel can start. Plans laid out by the project’s sponsor, the Gateway Development Commission, call for two giant boring machines to grind their way through the Palisades cliff, under the river and into the Manhattan bedrock.

Digging is expected to begin in 2025. The new tunnel is scheduled to open 10 years later.

On Friday, Mr. Buttigieg called the tunnel project “the largest and most significant infrastructure project” in the nation and likened it to “cathedrals of our infrastructure,” such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.

The plan to build a tunnel between the station and New Jersey has been a political football for more than 15 years. But with the enthusiastic support of the Biden administration, Mr. Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, has lined up more than $10 billion in federal funds for the tunnel, which Mr. Buttigieg has called a national priority.

“With so much money already there, there’s virtually no chance it won’t be completed,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday.

https://ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/news/2...in-new-funding

Gateway Tunnel project work begins as $3.8B in new funding is announced


By Erica Brosnan and Spectrum News Staff
Nov. 03, 2023

.....Schumer also announced Friday the allocation of an additional $3.8 billion in federal funding for the project, which is set to be the nation's largest public works project.

The announcement came on the heels of $6.88 billion Schumer unveiled in July, the largest such grant to a mass transit project in U.S. history.

Schumer said the newly secured $3.8 billion from the Federal Railroad Administration will be allocated toward critical elements such as track, signals and systems, while the July FTA funds will support the concrete core and shell of the Gateway Tunnel.

"This is huge for mass transit and transportation across New York," Schumer said at a news conference, calling the allocation a "major, major milestone" for the project. "With these new dollars, Gateway's future is assured. All systems go. There is no turning back."

The new rail tunnel under the river will serve Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. As part of the project, workers will also repair an existing tunnel damaged during Hurricane Sandy.

The existing tunnel is the only passenger rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York. More than 200,000 passenger trips are made on trains through it each weekday, according to the Biden administration.

Schumer said the project will also provide a large boost to the economy, predicting the creation of 72,000 jobs and $19 billion in economic activity.

The new tunnel will provide a vital artery in the northeast for rail traffic, where travel demand could rise as much as 32% more than pre-pandemic levels by the time the project is completed, according to estimates by the Regional Plan Association, a century-old nonprofit dedicated to the development of the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut region.

"For 30 years, Americans travelers, businesses, workers have been hoping for this day. But years of inaction, excuses, delays and the infighting are finally over," Gov. Kathy Hochul said at the news conference.

"We're now heralding in a new era of working not against each other, but working together to accomplish great things," she added.

https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news...pleted-by-2026

[Busy Bee]

Groundbreaking for Hudson Rail Tunnel Draws Politicos and Protestors

The feds are going to kick in 70 percent of the Hudson rail tunnel known as the Gateway Project, but the reality is more trains will not roll into Penn Station until 2038. And no one is saying yet where the extra trains well go in Penn Station.

MICHAEL ORESKES| 06 NOV 2023 | 10:23

Officials announced a major step forward on building a new Hudson river tunnel that would double the number of trains that can come from New Jersey, but they left unaddressed the controversial question of exactly where at the already overcrowded Penn Station those trains would go.

Senator Chuck Schumer arrived at a photo opportunity in Hudson Yards with news that the Federal Government would pay a bigger share– more than 70 percent–than previously expected of the $16.1 billion project known as Gateway.

Governor Kathy Hochul said she already had ideas for construction projects the state could fund with the money it would save by the reduction of its share of the Gateway project.

Officials billed the day as the official start of construction of the long delayed Gateway. Schumer and Hochul made their remarks in front of construction equipment gathered as a backdrop to announce the start of a seemingly prosaic piece of the project–a concrete casement to carry trains from the envisioned tunnel through the eastern portion of Hudson Yards.

Along with the start of the casement on the Manhattan side, work began on moving a road on the Jersey side to make way for tunneling.

The tunnel itself won’t be ready for ten years or more, but the casement needs to be built now so it won’t later impede potential plans to deck over the rail yard. The developer, Related Companies, has proposed building a Casino above the yards. Its executives attended the photo opportunity.

The western portion of Hudson Yards was decked over some ten years ago and is now a complex of residential, hotel and commercial buildings. Before that deck was built a concrete casement was built for trains coming through a tunnel that at the time was only a hope.

The casement being started now will connect to the one already built under the western portion of Hudson Yards. But where the trains will go from there is a subject of intense debate.

New Jersey Transit has seemed to favor a plan to expand Penn Station to the south, demolishing the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, sometimes described by its tax roll identification, Block 780. Right now that block is populated by small businesses including bars, restaurants, a pizza place, delis, coffee shops, a Meyer’s Parking garage and even St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

Community and preservation groups fiercely oppose this plan. They gathered outside the gates of Hudson Yards to press their view on Hochul, Schumer and the other assembled officials.

“We reiterated our support for the Gateway Tunnels under the Hudson, but reiterated our belief these tunnels should be connected to the Moynihan Penn Station Complex and not a terminal station with more tracks to the south of Penn Station,” said Samuel Turvey, a leader of the opposition.

A spokesman stressed that the Gateway project was entirely separate from any decision to expand Penn Station.

“There is no question as to where the trains that go through both the new tunnel, and the rehabilitated existing tunnel, will arrive,” said the spokesman, Stephen Sigmund. “They will arrive at Penn Station. From Day 1. And from the day forward. You are correct that at some point in the future Penn Station may be expanded. Even if that happened, they would still arrive at Penn Station.”

The configuration of the concrete casement already built or the one begun last week will not preordain any decisions about how to handle the increased traffic, Gateway officials argued.

Turvey and the other opponents argue that Block 780 can be saved if New Jersey Transit and the other railroads that use Penn Station–the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak–integrate their operations so they run trains through the station rather than terminating their runs there.

This, the argument goes, would increase capacity without increasing tracks and improve service by allowing passengers to take one seat rides from, say, Queens to New Jersey or Seacaucus, NJ to the Hamptons.

Amtrak said last summer that it was reviewing this option as part of an overall environmental review and plans to hold public outreach. But nothing further has been said since.

The chair of Amtrak, Anthony Coscia, said at the event that the expansion of rail capacity made possible by the new tunnel could allow innovations, such as running service directly from Long Island to Washington D.C.

Amtrak trains already run through Queens on their way from Boston to Washington through Penn Station, but they don’t stop there. Amtrak has previously said it would like to extend its intercity service out on Long Island to Ronkonkoma by working with the MTA and its Long Island Railroad “for each provider to expand services on the other’s route” a small version of through running of the sort Turvey and others are arguing for on a large scale.

The bigger question is whether New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, run by the MTA, could run trains through Penn Station onto each others services. Andy Byford, the former had of the New York Transit Authority and now head of high speed rail for Amtrak, has supported this concept.

But Amtrak says he is not working on the Gateway Project or the related plans to improve Penn Station.

“The proposed southern expansion of Penn Station doubles down on dated train operating methods at Penn today,” Said Turvey. “Instead of streamlining operations at Penn by implementing the modern methodology of through running, the railroads are opting to expand the highly inefficient use of terminal tracks.

“This means that instead of having trains pass through Penn productively to stops across the region they will sit in train yards or return near empty to their points of origin. This dated model will cost two to three times more than through running, provide poorer service and will require the gratuitous demolition of one block and a half of Manhattan.”

The new Hudson River tunnel has been repeatedly delayed. An earlier plan which would have brought trains in to the north of Penn Station, under Macy’s, was scuttled by then NJ governor Chris Christie. And efforts to revive the project were slow walked by the Trump Administration.

Senator Schumer stressed that the combination of the increased federal financing he was announcing and the start of the casement construction were a signal that the project will now proceed.

The need for the new tunnel was dramatized ten years ago by Super Storm Sandy. Schumer, Hochul and the others were gathered, in fact, in an area that had been submerged by sea water during the storm. The water also flooded the current tunnel, built 110 years ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The damage is so severe that service is frequently delayed and officials worry they might have to shut them down for long term repairs, disrupting an economic lifeline of the northeast.

When the new Gateway tunnel is finished, projected to be in 2035, the old tunnel will be taken out of service for repair. Only after it is returned to service, in 2038, will the full increase in rail capacity be realized.


https://www.ourtownny.com/news/groun...tors-YB2838991

[NYguy]

https://nypost.com/2023/11/08/metro/...aimed-records/

Penn Station revamp plan to cost $2B more than first claimed: records


By Nolan Hicks
Nov. 8, 2023

One of the two major renovation plans to revamp and operate Penn Station is likely to cost $2 billion more than its supporters initially claimed, The Post has learned.

Former MTA chairman Pat Foye and his new employer, Italian transportation conglomerate ASTM, have been claiming their bid to rebuild and privatize the station will cost no more than $6 billion – but records obtained by The Post show it will come in at more than $8 billion.

The newly surfaced estimates were included in a 200-plus page engineering analysis authored by the MTA and its consultants back in 2020 — when Foye was still helming the agency — as they examined a variety of plans for rebuilding the station.

The report was finalized a year before Foye departed the MTA and ended up on ASTM’s payroll as a top executive.

ASTM and the MTA are the only two parties now vying for the lucrative contract to overhaul the Midtown Manhattan transport hub.

Under the ASTM and MTA’s plans, both would spend $4.7 billion to tear apart the station’s warren of floors and narrow corridors and turn it into a new and easy-to-navigate structure that would consolidate all passenger-related functions on a single level.

ASTM’s pitch, however, would then build a grand new Eighth Avenue entrance by blowing out the west side of Penn Station and the Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater above it.

The MTA’s analysis considered a nearly identical proposal to ASTM’s plan, which found that it would cost another $1.2 billion to carry out that work, the records show.

And that’s before paying MSG’s controversial owner, James Dolan, for the land, which ASTM has publicly estimated would cost another $500 million.

The pandemic-era inflation bubble of 2020-2022 would push that $6.4 billion total up to $8.1 billion — assuming there’s not a drop of debt required to finance the proposal.

Foye and ASTM have gotten powerful Manhattan elected officials onboard with their pitch by claiming they could finance the overhaul, run the station and turn a profit by charging the MTA, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit a seemingly incidental annual fee of $250 million for 50 years.

However, the engineering docs and subsequent analysis by The Post show that would only generate $7.5 billion over three decades, meaning the operation would be deep in the red for years unless taxpayers and riders shell over larger payments.

“Press releases are not financial plans and are not comparable to a thorough analysis of cost completed by the MTA,” said Rachael Fauss, an MTA expert at watchdog group, Reinvent Albany. “Transit riders need more than a PowerPoint to explain how the costs are going to add up.”

“Trust us, ‘you’ll get a steal on the front end and you’ll just have to pay a bit over the years’ — it’s a gimmick,” she added. “We’re going to pay either way. What appears to be cheaper will likely cost more in the end. The amount of risk they’re asking taxpayers to take on is enormous.”

In comparison, the MTA’s plan swaps out the grand Eighth Avenue train hall proposal for a dramatic midblock entrance, which would replace the existing shuttered taxi way and require a complicated reworking of the skybridge that links MSG to a neighboring office tower.

The midblock proposal was estimated to cost approximately $750 million in 2020.

All in, the MTA’s proposal was estimated to cost $5.45 billion in 2020, a price tag that’s been pushed to $7.1 billion by inflation, the agency has said.

Dolan has fiercely opposed the MTA’s plan and claims it could interrupt operations at the MSG, potentially forcing the Knicks and Rangers to play elsewhere.

His company has provided engineering support and other assistance for ASTM’s proposal, which MTA insiders have viewed as a stalking horse to score a large property payout from demolishing the Hulu.

Government watchdog groups have flagged Foye’s involvement as a likely violation of state regulations that bar him from any interactions with his former agency for two years and impose a lifetime ban on matters he was personally involved with.

[NYguy]

Saw on the news the rebuilt 7th Avenue entrance will reopen this weekend.

[NYguy]

So they’ve finally reopened the 7th Avenue entrance, which connects to the upper level. Nothing spectacular (will look better when all the scaffolding and excess is removed). But it was a major inconvenience having it closed.

[NYguy]

Another look…


https://twitter.com/AirlineFlyer/sta...94431471464691

[Doubleu1117]

Wonder what will be going where the Amtrak/ Vornado welcome signs are. Would be nice to have train times, idk what else would work unless it's just going to be ads.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Doubleu1117

Wonder what will be going where the Amtrak/ Vornado welcome signs are. Would be nice to have train times, idk what else would work unless it's just going to be ads.

They probably won't put the train times, at least like the regular screens, because they don't want people blocking the entrance. It could be more like the touristy/advertising stuff they do over at Moynihan.


For comparison, this is what it used to look like...


https://twitter.com/AirlineFlyer/sta...07056020537610

[NYguy]

Video before the entrance reopening..


• Video Link





https://twitter.com/tonysimone/statu...86825766687048

[NYguy]

Was admiring the new entrance area around 2 Penn earlier, and the MSG entrance is great. It's what stands out. From that side, it would be hard to believe the actual crap that is the arena building. Dolan needs to do better.

Back to Gateway, the new Portal Bridge is making steady progress. A sign and a reminder that the new tunnel is on the way, and better days are ahead for Penn.

This video is already a couple of weeks old, but I always forget to post them.



• Video Link

[NYguy]

• Video Link

[NYguy]

Work continues on the Portal Bridge segment of Gateway...



• Video Link















And construction on the "box" for the new tunnel segment of Gateway....
















One of the new MSG entrances at 2 Penn....