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A dramatic new makeover of Penn Station’s entrance at 7th Avenue and 32nd Street in Manhattan has been completed by Foster + Partners and AECOM for clients Amtrak and the Vornado Realty Trust. The rebuilding project expands the entrance’s width by 50 percent while making it... View full entry
Skanska, AECOM, and SOM have announced the completion of Penn Station’s $414 million Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) concourse renovation. The project, which began in January 2021, set out to modernize and widen LIRR’s 33rd Street train hall corridor, all while maintaining the station’s daily... View full entry
The only thing everyone seems to know for certain is that nothing meaningful ever really happens to improve North America’s busiest and most miserable train hub, despite decades of demands and promises. Hope has long gone to die on the 6:50 to Secaucus.
But now may actually be different.
— The New York Times
Kimmelman complimented the new PAU/HOK/ASTM North America P3 plan as “the disruption needed to get Albany moving", and one that “lets daylight, dignity and circulatory logic replace the rat’s maze beneath Madison Square Garden.” “ASTM’s architecture at this early stage is a... View full entry
New York officials are calling on design firms, engineers and architects to draw up a plan for a new Penn Station design that keeps both commuters and the community in mind. [...]
In a dramatic about-face, the governor announced plans to redevelop Penn Station without touching the neighborhood surrounding it. With soaring glass ceilings and a broad marble concourse not unlike the Moynihan Train Hall directly adjacent to it.
— ABC 7
The scrapped 10-tower office component of the $7 billion plan was ultimately done in by the consequences of post-pandemic economics that have profoundly affected the commercial real estate market in Midtown and other parts of Manhattan. Gone also are the 1,800 housing units included in... View full entry
The race to author an alternative solution to the recently-halted redevelopment of Penn Station may now have a top contender after the Italian firm ASTM Group released its plans for a proposal that would radically alter New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden. Last week, the New York Times... View full entry
Vornado Realty Trust, the developer hoping to remake the skyline around Pennsylvania Station with a bundle of new office towers, has put the brakes on the massive redevelopment plan for now as interest rates remain high and the real estate market struggles to recover from the pandemic.
Plans for the Penn site, a roughly 18 million-square-foot project that could include 10 new skyscrapers of mostly office space around the transit hub, could be delayed for at least two to three years.
— The New York Times
Despite her recent mum on the status of the $7 billion project, the Empire State Development agency said it remains confident in New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s commitment. Vornado, which owns half of the sites included in the scheme and in January was delisted from the S&P 500, reportedly... View full entry
The congested, chaotic section of Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station 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.
— The New York Times
The same tactic was used in the urban cores of major American cities such as Los Angeles to break apart mostly residential areas and redevelop them into high-rise-laden commercial districts, a practice which may now be boomeranging in the post-pandemic economy. New York is claiming “economic... View full entry
A key state oversight body approved the financing plan to redevelop Penn Station and its surrounding neighborhood Wednesday, greenlighting one of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s loftiest projects, which is estimated to cost a total of $22 billion. — Gothamist
Yesterday the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), a state entity behind granting financial approval for proposals from statewide public authorities, approved how the multibillion-dollar Penn Station Redevelopment Plan will be funded. A day before the vote, a document was released detailing... View full entry
New York State officials on Thursday approved a sweeping redevelopment of Midtown Manhattan that would transform Pennsylvania Station, the busiest transportation hub in North America, from a run-down transit center into a city centerpiece. The eight-member board of Empire State Development, the state’s economic development agency and the group steering the project, unanimously voted in favor. — The New York Times
The Penn Station Redevelopment Plan is set to be one of the largest real estate projects in U.S. history. The project, spanning approximately 18 million square feet, includes the construction of 10 skyscrapers surrounding the station that will host office and retail space, 1,800 housing units, and... View full entry
Arup has been placed in the lead for MTA/NJ Transit and Amtrak’s planned redevelopment and expansion of Penn Station in New York City. The tender was announced recently by the rail service and is part of a larger Gateway Program aimed at improving a critical infrastructure clog situated in a... View full entry
Governor Cuomo has unveiled two new reconstruction options for transforming Penn Station into "a world-class, 21st-century transportation hub."
New images released Wednesday afternoon show how transit officials hope to reinvent the dreary subterranean Midtown labyrinth into a modern, light-filled transit destination.
The proposal lays out two distinct options, both of which would retain Madison Square Garden, but also require its purchase.
— Urbanize NYC
The designs are the work of FXcollaborative and WSP. View full entry
With the beginning of the new year, New York City also celebrated the opening of a major infrastructure project: the Moynihan Train Hall, situated between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and West 31st and 33rd Streets, expands the notoriously crowded Pennsylvania Station complex with a... View full entry
Empire Station New York State officials led by Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan this week to expand rail capacity at Penn Station in New York City by as much as 40% through the addition of a new bay of passenger rail concourses just south of the existing station. More specifically, the... View full entry
Conceived to handle fewer than 200,000 passengers, the replacement Penn Station is today the busiest transit hub in the Western Hemisphere, through which more than 600,000 commuters pass each day — an experience as humiliating and bewildering as Grand Central remains inspiring and exalted. — The New York Times
NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman takes a look back at the triumphal arrival of the former Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead & White in 1910, its steady decline in the following decades, the consequential replacement with the current solution—a disappointing product of mid-century... View full entry
The transformation of the historic Farley Post Office into a bright, modern transportation hub known as Moynihan Train Hall is on time and on budget for its late 2020 opening. To date, 800 people working every day have logged more than one million hours of labor, and the four, 92-foot-high skylights crowning the 225,000-square-foot LIRR and Amtrak concourse are perhaps the most stunning example of their efforts. Get an up-close look at these feats of engineering. — 6sqft
