Jones Lang LaSalle


Plan to Move Garden Augurs Change for Midtown
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Steven Roth, the chairman of a company once known for operating suburban shopping centers, made a startling move nine years ago when he plunked down more than $2 billion for office towers, a hotel and retail space surrounding Madison Square Garden on a bet that the neighborhood was ripe for transformation.

Now, Mr. Roth is quietly circulating a $7 billion plan detailing just how radical a transformation he envisions for the district, including moving the Garden to a new home on Ninth Avenue. He wants state officials to rethink the plan they have hired him to develop, an expansion of Pennsylvania Station under Eighth Avenue into the landmark James A. Farley Post Office, which is to be renamed Moynihan Station for the senator who championed the project.

Not only would Mr. Roth build Moynihan Station, but he would remake the cramped and dreary Pennsylvania Station itself, turning it into a monumental gateway to New York under a sweeping glass canopy.

The Garden would move a block west to the rear of the Farley building, allowing Mr. Roth, the chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, and his partner, Stephen M. Ross, the chairman of Related Companies, to build a commercial complex on top of Penn Station akin to Rockefeller Center, with five towers and seven million square feet of office space, apartments and stores.

The city's history is littered with hugely ambitious and ultimately unrealized plans, but while this one faces obstacles, it has been gaining momentum in the past few months. The two men have a nonbinding agreement with the owners of the Garden to move the arena, something other developers sought in vain for more than two decades.

A battle royale like the one that doomed the Jets stadium on the Far West Side last year seems unlikely. The Regional Plan Association and Community Board 4, which opposed the stadium, both like the Roth-Ross plan. And six of the city's business organizations heartily endorsed it at a public hearing on May 30, even though it was not on the agenda and has yet to have a formal public debut.

Transportation advocates say the Roth-Ross plan provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reconfigure and expand the busiest rail station in the country, where 550,000 passengers struggle through a maze of underground passageways each day. Under the current Moynihan Station plan, 80 percent of passengers would still use the old, crowded quarters.

To win approval, the project would have to run a gantlet from City Hall to Albany to Amtrak, which operates Penn Station. The state preservation commission would have to approve the Garden's move to the rear of the Farley post office in order for the developers to get valuable tax credits. Finally, it is unclear who would pay for the estimated $1 billion cost of renovating Penn Station.

There are political obstacles. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is displeased with the owners of the Garden, who ran a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against him last year that helped kill his plan for the $2.2 billion football stadium on the Far West Side. And state officials are moving quickly with the simpler Moynihan Station plan, because Gov. George E. Pataki wants a groundbreaking before he leaves office.

If the larger project is approved, it would mean billions for Mr. Roth and Mr. Ross — the two Steves, as they have become known. It would enormously enhance Mr. Roth's holdings, which include the skyscraper at 1 Penn Plaza and the Pennsylvania Hotel. He would also solidify his hold on an area where his company already owns or controls seven million square feet and plans to double that figure.

"We are about making money here on a grand scale," said Mr. Roth, who has a reputation for refreshing boldness, at an investors' conference earlier this month.

But some say the Roth-Ross plan would serve the public, too. "It's actually a real convergence of public benefits and private interests, assuming the Garden fits without breaching the grand historic space," said Lynne B. Sagalyn, a professor of real estate development and planning at the University of Pennsylvania. "There's the potential for another high-density cluster of commercial activity connected to transportation, like Times Square and Grand Central."

Not everyone is a fan. The Farley post office was designed by McKim, Mead & White, the architects of the original Penn Station, which was torn down in 1963 to make way for the current Garden. Now some fear that history is repeating itself.

Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, called the proposal to move the Garden into the Farley building akin to "Cinderella's stepsisters trying to jam their feet into the glass slipper."

Mr. Roth and Mr. Ross were selected last year to build Moynihan Station and a major block of space for retail, office or residential use. The developers, who would pay the state $313.8 million and a yet-to-be negotiated annual fee, would also transfer about 1 million square feet of unused development rights from the Farley building across Eighth Avenue to the northeast corner of 33rd Street for two residential towers.

Then, earlier this year, the two men struck a tentative deal with James L. Dolan, whose family controls Cablevision, the Garden, the Knicks and the Rangers. By moving the Garden, the developers would gain the enormously valuable right to build three new skyscrapers above Penn Station, with a mix of apartments, offices, a hotel and stores, while generating up to $75 million a year in property taxes for the city. The Garden, which has considered renovating, would get a modern, egg-shaped arena with many more luxury boxes.

There is no final design for the Roth-Ross proposal, but the developers' current models show two buildings bordering Eighth Avenue — Moynihan West, in the Farley building, and Moynihan East, a sunny, rebuilt Penn Station with a monumental, glass-walled entrance and grand staircase at 31st Street. A commuter would be able to look up the stairs, through the glass entrance and across Eighth Avenue to see the 20 Corinthian columns, each 53 feet high, across the two-block front of the Farley building.

A soaring multistory glass canopy would stretch diagonally to 33rd Street, near Seventh Avenue, bringing sunlight to a hall leading to transit and subway platforms. The new towers would be built atop a retail building at street level.

The relocated Madison Square Garden, on Ninth Avenue, would take up as much as two-thirds of the Farley building, eliminating an intermodal hall in the current plan. The glass-topped great hall, which is slightly larger than the comparable space at Grand Central Terminal, would still be renovated as a public space. The Garden would rise 50 feet, or nearly five stories, above the roof. The post office would move its remaining operations, and the historic stamp windows would be used to sell tickets to Garden events.

The owners of the Garden want a major presence on Eighth Avenue — perhaps banners hanging among the columns, similar to those at the Metropolitan Museum, or an expensive set of electronic signs.

That is an image sure to stir up the critics and even alienate supporters. Opponents placed an ad in The New York Times last week with the headline: "Don't let it happen again," a reference to the demolition of the original Penn Station.

The issue has gotten so heated in landmark and preservation circles that critics have chastised the senator's daughter, Maura Moynihan, who has championed her father's vision for the Farley, for narrating a media presentation of the new proposal. The developers have quietly shown the presentation to Mayor Bloomberg and various business, civic and news media figures.

"We've got to be open-minded, because chances like this don't come along very often," Ms. Moynihan said in an interview. "The only thing I've ever cared about is a bigger, better train station that liberates New Yorkers from the horror of the pit, Penn Station."

The developers contend that their plan would accelerate what has been a slow transformation of a dowdy area south of the garment district. "The larger Moynihan plan would serve as the catalyst for the transformation of Manhattan's West Side, ease overcrowding at Penn Station and create a much more functional and architecturally distinct gateway to New York City," Mr. Roth said.

Critics do not see it that way. "Clearly, from the developer's point of view, this is about mega-development and mega-bucks," said Ms. Breen of the Landmarks Conservancy. "But we all started with the notion of a great train station for New York City. That's gotten lost in the shuffle."

But Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, said that an intermodal hall at a reconfigured Penn Station would provide for far more efficient transfers among subways, Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road. With the Garden suddenly willing to move, Mr. Yaro said the city should not pass up the chance.

And city officials are clearly intrigued. Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said: "It's undeniably a good idea, in terms of generating tax revenues, creating a train station and its impact on the development of the West Side. The question is whether we can make it work financially."

In all likelihood, the government officials would ask the developers to pay for at least part of rebuilding Penn Station in return for approving what is potentially a very lucrative project.
Despite his dislike for the Dolans, Mr. Bloomberg has indicated that he would not block the move, although he will not let the Garden keep a $10 million a year property tax exemption, Mr. Doctoroff said: "It doesn't automatically travel to a new site."

The biggest obstacle may be the governor, whose appointees are moving fast to approve the simpler Moynihan Station plan as early as next month, after 14 years of stops and starts. The money is in place, and the post office has agreed to move. The prime tenant, New Jersey Transit, has agreed to operate the public spaces.

State officials want Mr. Roth and Mr. Ross to wrap up the negotiations on the Moynihan Station plan, put up an initial $150 million and break ground in the fall. A separate deal with the Garden and the city would mean delays for public hearings and an environmental review.

"Moynihan Station is critical to improving and enlarging the gateway to New York," said Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation. "While a new sports arena would be a vast improvement, the building of Moynihan Station is more important than whether Madison Square Garden moves, or new high-rise buildings are built."