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It’s perched atop the depressing, low-ceilinged maze known as Penn Station, daily hive for 600,000 scuttling commuters.
The Garden’s presence is one major impediment to the 25-year-old dream of turning the decrepit and overcrowded Penn station into a smoothly operating city gateway.
— bloomberg.com
"While Madison Square Garden maintains that the arena special permit should continue in perpetuity, we believe the term is warranted due to the uniqueness of the site and the importance of Penn Station to the city," said Amanda Burden, the head of City Planning Department who also chairs the City Planning Commission. — Crain's
The New York City Planning Commission has laid out a case for restricting a special permit to 15 years that allows Madison Square Garden to operate in the heart of Midtown. The move would hopefully restart negotiations to get "the world's most famous arena" to relocate, freeing up space to... View full entry
Every day, more than 600,000 thousand rail commuters navigate the crowded maze of tunnels and tracks that is Penn Station. Mass transit advocates would like to replace the aging station with a world-class transportation hub. But there's a big obstacle: Madison Square Garden, the arena that sits directly on top of Penn Station. And the Garden's owners show no signs of moving. — npr.org
Previously: Municipal Art Society Challenges Architects for New Penn Station Vision View full entry
The four firms — Santiago Calatrava, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and SOM — will have until May 29 to propose new designs that will be unveiled to the public that day at the TimesCenter on West 41st Street. “We’re really trying to unlock people’s imaginations about the very real potential of a new arena and of a new Penn Station,” said Vin Cipolla, the society’s president, in an interview. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
The architects Peter Samton and Diana Goldstein can tell you exactly where they were a half century ago, at 5 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1962: out on Seventh Avenue, tilting at windmills.
Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece, was doomed. They knew it. But they weren’t going to let it go down undefended.
— cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
Some 600,000 commuters, riding Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, now suffer Penn Station every day. That makes it probably the busiest transit hub in the Western world, busier than Heathrow Airport in London, busier than Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy airports combined.
To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.
— Michael Kimmelman, nytimes.com
