Moynihan Project Breaks Ground, So to Speak

NEW YORK CITY-A ceremonial groundbreaking Monday afternoon, albeit at a pre-existing building, marked the start of the transformation of the James A. Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station, an annex to Penn Station across the street. The ceremony followed the formal signing of an agreement providing an $83-million federal TIGER (Transportation Initiatives Generating Economic Recovery) grant to New York State.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is kicking in the rest of the $276-million cost of the first phase. The project’s final cost could reach $1.5 billion.

“This is an historic day for New York; not only the 100th anniversary of Penn Station, but also the birth of another,” Gov. David Paterson said at the ceremony. Inside Penn Station, Amtrak and the two commuter rail lines that run trains to and from the nation’s busiest passenger facility, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, co-sponsored an exhibit marking the original station’s centenary.

Technically, Monday was not the actual anniversary of the original, seven-acre structure’s opening. Limited service to and from what was then known as Pennsylvania Station began in September 1910, while the first full day of operation was Nov. 27 of that year. About 100,000 passengers passed through the station that day; its smaller and more cramped successor now sees more than 550,000 rail travelers daily, more than the region’s three major airports combined and about four times the traffic at Grand Central Terminal.

By the early 1960s, the original Penn Station had outlived its usefulness to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which a few years later would merge with the New York Central and eventually file for bankruptcy. The diminished passenger rail traffic of the day meant that a facility of Penn Station’s scale was deemed unnecessary, and it was demolished between 1963 and 1966 to make way for the new Madison Square Garden.

Thirty years after the original Penn Station’s demolition began, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan first proposed turning the station’s architectural “twin,” the Farley building located across Eighth Avenue, into a rail passenger facility. The much-discussed project spent much of the next two decades in various stages of getting off the ground.

In 2007, the Empire State Development Corp. purchased the building from the US Postal Service for $230 million, with more than half that sum coming from the Port Authority. A joint venture of Vornado Realty Trust and Related Cos., which was selected in 2005 to redevelop the Farley building as both a train facility and commercial space, put up about $55 million of the purchase price. A large-scale proposal to redevelop the surrounding neighborhood, which would have included moving the Garden into the Farley building, constructing a new Penn Station and putting up office towers, was scrapped in 2008 as the market soured.

Helping get the project off the ground once again was Amtrak’s September 2009 decision to relocate its operations from Penn Station into Moynihan. Lobbying by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) helped secure the TIGER grant, and in a statement issued Monday, Schumer says, “The construction of Moynihan Station will create jobs, upgrade aging infrastructure and leave behind an economic engine for the entire region.”

Phase one of the Moynihan Station project will include the expansion and enhancement of the 33rd Street Connector between Penn Station and the West End Concourse, which lies under the grand staircase of the Farley building. The project will also entail extending and widening the West End Concourse to serve nine of Penn Station’s 11 platforms along with new vertical access points and entrances. The first phase is expected to be complete by 2016.