(rshsdepot) Penn Station, NY

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Penn Station Deal Reaches Junction; Bush, Pataki Push
by Tom McGeveran - New York Observer


City and state officials are close to resolving a year-long dispute that had
stalled plans for a new Penn Station in the grand Beaux-Arts post-office
building on 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue, according to a source close to
the discussions.

The resolution of the dispute means that Senator DanielPatrick Moynihan is
on the verge of realizing a long-cherished dream-the construction of a huge
new transit hub in the James A. Farley Post Office building that will
connect an array of subway and commuter lines.

Mr. Moynihan was appointed earlier this month to the board of the Penn
Station Redevelopment Corporation, the city-state agency responsible for
building the new project. He had spent 10 years pushing for the construction
of a new transit hub to replace Penn Station across the street, but endless
delays and apathetic public officials had gradually worn him down.

Mr. Moynihan became so dispirited that he took to quoting Vincent Scully's
infamous reflection on arriving at the current Penn Station: "You once
entered New York City like an emperor; now you slither in like a rat."

In the last year, Mr. Moynihan's hopes were being held up by a bureaucratic
dispute. The Penn Station Redevelopment Corporation, or PSRC, was fighting
with the U.S. Postal Service, which currently owns the building, over the
latter's desire to use a large portion of the new structure.

But now, according to a source close to the Postal Service, the agency has
dramatically scaled back its demand for space in the new structure.

The source said that the agency was almost certain to vote to turn over the
building to the new agency in one of its next two monthly board meetings.

A spokesperson for the Postal Service would neither confirm nor deny the
claim. "Everything is being finalized right now, but we know what we're
going to do," said Postal Service spokeswoman Diane Todd.

But Ms. Todd confirmed that there had been "substantial progress" in the
talks and said that the Postal Service was no longer debating whether, but
where, they would move their Farley operations.

"We'll be moving the operations to [other] buildings that we have within
Manhattan," she said. "Really, we're in the final throes of the negotiation,
and they're still working out the plans as far as what offices are going to
go where."

Current plans call for the building of a terminal that would serve Amtrak,
New Jersey Transit, the West Side subway lines, and possibly Metro North and
even ferries leaving from the West Side waterfront nearby. The deal is being
finalized in part because Governor George Pataki wants to have it under his
belt in time for the November elections, according to Albany sources.

The recent strides forward have Mr. Moynihan ready for a victory lap. It was
Mr. Moynihan who originally rallied support in Congress for rebuilding Penn
Station at the post-office site a decade ago. Mr. Moynihan's only apparent
reward for all those efforts was to be tapped by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to
sit on the PSRC's board of directors last April.

It's not surprising that the Postal Service was loath to give up the
building, a white-columned Beaux-Arts beauty that was built to match the old
Penn Station, which was torn down in the 1960's, before those who loved it
had a chance to make a peep in its defense.

Trouble started just after the Sept. 11 terror attack, when the Postal
Service's vice president for facilities, Rudy Umscheid, sent a letter to the
PSRC that seemed to call the deal off entirely. He cited the Postal Service'
s need to use the facility after its Church Street plant near Ground Zero
was shut down.

But things got better a month later, when Charles Gargano, chief of the
Empire State Development Corporation, accompanied Mr. Pataki and Mr.
Bloomberg, then a candidate for Mayor, to the White House to urge the
federal government to help rebuild New York.

The President Intervenes

The trio asked President George W. Bush to help break the log jam. They
wanted Mr. Bush to pressure the Postal Service to take a deal that would
give them $155 million in exchange for the facility. The Postal Service
could rent offices and retail space for a period of some 15 years at little
or no cost. The next day, Mr. Umscheid sent a letter to the state agency
saying the Postal Service was "prepared to negotiate in good faith."

As negotiations dragged into the spring, the major sticking point was how to
replace the space the agency would lose when they forfeited the building to
rail concourses and retail and commercial uses.

One Capitol Hill source who has been following the Postal Service's
negotiations closely said that the deal was now possible because the
financially strapped agency's fiscal strategy had changed.

"They're consolidating their operations where they can," said the source.
"Where they can get money up front or over time for their biggest and
underutilized facilities, it makes a lot of sense for them."

State officials declined to comment on the negotiations. "We continue to
work hard and continue to have productive negotiations with the post
office," said Michael Marr, a spokesman for the PSRC. "No deal has yet been
finalized, but we will continue our efforts to bring a 21st-century
state-of-the-art Penn Station to the 500,000 commuters and numerous
travelers who use Penn Station every day."

The Postal Service had cited financial woes in its threat a year ago to walk
away from the deal, but since then it has undertaken severe cost-cutting
measures. A Postal Service spokesperson said that a slight recovery, along
with those measures, has actually allowed the agency to come in at the end
of fiscal year 2002 with a projected $1 billion deficit-$700 million less
than the figure for 2001.

Still, the long-running dispute had made it impossible to move forward on
the project. A $155 million bond financing the purchase has yet to be
floated, and the project's development team hasn't been able to put a spade
in the ground.

The project has constantly defied optimistic predictions. In December 2001,
Mr. Gargano asserted that construction was on a "fast track" and would begin
in the spring. When spring arrived, however, contractors on the project were
predicting it would start in November, making way for a 2007 debut for the
new Penn Station. Officials now will not project when building can begin.

Meanwhile, federal money secured for the project is not guaranteed: In
December of last year, the House of Representatives rescinded a three-year,
$60 million grant for building the new Penn Station. Though the U.S. Senate
restored it in conference and has reinstated it in this year's Senate
appropriations bill, they have yet to see the House version.

A year after the terrorist attacks, it's unclear whether lawmakers will see
Penn Station as a priority as they continue to provide financial aid for New
York.

There are some factors that could help the project. Mr. Bloomberg, along
with his deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, has
launched a giant push to redevelop the far West Side. And last spring, the
Mayor publicly cited a Penn Station deal as essential to the plan-and later
brought in Mr. Moynihan to get it done.

During a news conference at City Hall at the time, Mr. Bloomberg told
reporters that the current Penn Station was a "dreary subterranean failure,"
and called the Penn Station rebuilding effort "essential to the
transportation needs of this city, and to the future security of New York
and the entire nation."

Mr. Bloomberg hasn't been the only influential politician to take Mr.
Moynihan's lead and push for the project. Mr. Pataki has called the
rebuilding of the station the "most important" transportation initiative
before the city. Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have both pushed
for a redeveloped station to meet new security standards in the wake of last
September's terrorist attacks.

And former President Bill Clinton came to New York in March to unveil
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's award-winning plan for the site. The plan calls
for a restoration of the white marble façade with a central concourse
sheathed in transparent glass that, in renderings, glows like a crown from
the building's roof line.

With all that political clout at the table, it nevertheless remains to be
seen whether Mr. Moynihan can cut through all the red tape-or whether he
needs to. The move by Mr. Bloomberg to appoint him to the board was
interpreted by many as a sign that a deal was close, with the retired
Senator's return seen more as a reward for his long work on the project than
an essential element of getting the job done.

"Having Moynihan on the board is great," said one former official who has
worked with Mr. Moynihan on the project in the past. "He's just the world's
greatest noodge."

You may reach Tom McGeveran via email at: tmcgeveran_@_observer.com.



=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

------------------------------