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Preservationists alarmed at possible MSG move

By Chuck Bennett | amNewYork Staff Writer

June 12, 2006

The city's preservation movement was sparked by the razing of the original Penn Station in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden.

Now, more than four decades later, preservationist groups warn that the Garden is at the center of another potential development blunder.

Real estate powerhouses Vornado Realty Trust and The Related Companies are quietly pitching an idea to build a new Madison Square Garden behind the landmark James Farley Post Office, just across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station and the arena.

The new arena would share space with Moynihan Station, a transit hub slated to built in the Farley building.

Few details about a new Madison Square Garden have been released, but preservationists are aghast at the idea of putting an arena adjacent to the historic post office.

"Only in New York do you want to do this again," says Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. "If moving the Garden is of value, why aren't they exploring the other side of Ninth Avenue where they don't have to damage a landmark building."

Under the proposal, the current Garden -- between Seventh and Eighth avenues -- would be demolished to make way for a $6 billion mega-block of three or four skyscraper and a new Penn Station -- complete with vaulted windowed ceilings to bring natural light down to the tracks.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, a senior vice president with The Related Companies, called it "a once in a lifetime opportunity to lift the Garden from the site and create two great head houses for Penn Station, Moynihan East and Moynihan West."

'Moynihan East' would be the new Penn Station east of Eighth Avenue. 'Moynihan West' would be the transit hub in the Farley building, a $920 million station for the Long Island Rail Road and N.J. Transit, named after the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a booster of the project.

Construction on the Farley building station could begin as early as September and it could eventually take 30% of Penn Station's 550,000 daily passengers.

But Breen, along with the Municipal Arts Society and other preservationists, worry that the Farley building -- designed in 1912 by McKim, Mead and White, the same firm that created the original Penn station -- would be forever marred by an arena that would likely stand 50 feet above the current facade.

"You want to show me a tasteful arena?" she asked.

Further, Moynihan Station, a project they support, would be swallowed by the arena.

"It is like Cinderella's stepsister trying to fit into the glass slippers," she said. The arena would take up at least 60% of the entire Farley complex by the developers' estimates.

And it's not just preservationists concerned about the Garden’s move.

"There are elements of incompatibility between the two" projects, said Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, the mayor's economic czar. "Regardless, it is incumbent on us to try and figure out whether this works quickly. Our view, as the City of New York, to finally deal with the tragedy of the demise of the old Penn Station, in a grand way, is an opportunity well worth a very close examination." The city already committed $154 million for Moynihan Station.

Chakrabarti declined to discuss the concerns of the preservationists. A public review process for the Garden proposal could begin as early as this summer.