Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and it’s Primary Day in New York City. But first, we’ll look at Amtrak’s plan for renovating Pennsylvania Station.
Amtrak released plans for a monumentally different Pennsylvania Station in New York a couple of weeks ago, with a grand entrance and a grand price tag of $7 billion to $8 billion. The developers promised a “spectacular transformation.” The principal architect, Vishaan Chakrabarti, described the exterior as “inviting” and the concourse as “a 450-foot-long civic room.” How different that would be from the crowded maze of dreary passageways that is Penn Station now.
I asked The New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, who has written about past proposals to fix Penn Station, to talk about this one.
You write that the Trump-backed, multibillion-dollar plan to rebuild Penn Station is a promising step forward. Why?
For at least 40 years, there have been plans, one after another, to fix Penn Station, and like Lucy with the football, there has been constant frustration.
This one’s promising because the federal government is taking over. The federal government in this case happens to be led by Donald J. Trump. But the problem with the previous attempts to rebuild Penn Station is that the federal government, the landlord, was not in charge — the tenants, who argue all the time and never agree, tried to put forward one plan or another. The hope here is that all those conflicting interests can be short-circuited.
Whether something is actually built or it becomes another Trump fiasco — that’s the question, isn’t it?
In the last couple of years, a bunch of plans have died for the reasons I just mentioned: They were put forward by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for example, which is a tenant. NJ Transit, which is another tenant, and Amtrak didn’t go along.
It’s true that there have been some improvements over time. The M.T.A. built a new concourse. But when you look at other great cities, you realize that New Yorkers are stuck in a Stockholm syndrome situation. They’ve come to believe Penn Station is not so bad when, in fact, it’s a dingy, dangerous and disgraceful place.
Much of what made America great in the eyes of people around the world was the care we used to have for public infrastructure and public space. All you have to do is walk a few blocks to Grand Central Terminal to see what that can mean for the thousands of people who come to work in the city, for that neighborhood and beyond. It’s not just lipstick on a pig.
Won’t a more appealing Penn Station help Amtrak get more people to take its trains? I would think the same goes for NJ Transit and the M.T.A.-operated Long Island Rail Road.
New York allocated billions of dollars for upgrades to our three major airports, which needed them. They serve fewer passengers per day than pass through Penn Station, and on the whole, they serve a more affluent ridership. There’s an equity element here.
Doing this project, for not nearly as much money as was spent on the new LaGuardia terminals, does not preclude the other important changes at Penn Station that have been debated for a long time, like through-running, which would allow trains to go from New Jersey to Long Island. It doesn’t preclude eventually moving the Garden, either.
Well, what about the financing? How will the Penn Station rebuild be paid for?
With Trump’s track record, it’s impossible to know. The secretary of transportation has said there are billions of dollars available, and Amtrak officials seem optimistic.
But beyond that, what are the commitments by the private development partner, financial and otherwise, to build and maintain at the station? Will NJ Transit contribute?
And most of all, will [Gov.] Kathy Hochul and the M.T.A. go along? Because the M.T.A. was upset about Trump coming in and big-footing the plan it was trying to push forward. So far, she and the M.T.A. are not willing to participate in the plan, even though that’s basically cutting off the nose of New Yorkers to spite our faces.
A project like this is a political lightning rod and seen in partisan terms. The very mention of the name Trump, even though there are no gilded statues (not yet, anyway), is enough to disqualify consideration in some people’s minds. This may well turn out to be just like a lot of his plans in Washington, something that will never work out.
But the person in charge at Amtrak, Andy Byford, is a respected figure with a track record. And we need to have conversations about what’s good for the public that are not worded in partisanship before they even get started.
What about the architecture?
It is good. It’s not a work of groundbreaking modernism. It’s not architecture on the level of Grand Central, but it is architecture of dignity and sense, with classical, deco and some New York-y elements woven in.
It will create lofty spaces that are easy to navigate, safer and light-filled, even below the Garden, by removing the hideous theater along the Eighth Avenue side. The layout doesn’t change the number of tracks, but it should reduce delays by adding access to them, making it easier and safe to get on and off trains.
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy with a high near 78. Showers and thunderstorms are likely. The sky will clear tonight as temperatures settle in the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until July 3 (Independence Day observed)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Staten Islanders are pretty much nonbelievers. They are big-time doubters. So I don’t think anybody thought this would ever be built.” — Joseph Tirone, a real estate investor, on a long-delayed project to build a sea wall on the borough’s eastern edge.
The latest Metro news
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No new trial: The Supreme Court, reversing a lower court decision, restored the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, the handyman found guilty of kidnapping and murdering 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose abduction in Manhattan in 1979 reshaped childhood in America.
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An officer’s work habits became a cause for concern: Lt. Ricardo Santos of the New Jersey State Police, who worked in an executive protection unit for three former governors, faced questions about his judgment and conduct before he became the primary suspect in a double murder-suicide.
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Major expansion: This week the New York Historical, the city’s oldest museum, will debut the Tang Wing for American Democracy, which is highlighting the role of protest for America’s 250th anniversary.
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Surviving in New York: Maruf Abubakari Sadick, a security guard who lives in the East Bronx, makes $46,000 a year. At the end of the month, he squirrels away what he can so he can eventually pay for nursing school.
It’s Primary Day
For Primary Day, the polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Here are details on what you need to know — when, where and how to cast your ballot.
Some 172,743 people cast ballots in nine days of early voting, according to the Board of Elections. That is less than half the number who did so last year, when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for mayor after drawing thousands of younger, newly registered voters to the polls. The falloff means that the races to be decided by today ’s voting could test Mamdani’s influence where progressives are taking on more establishment candidates.
Three House races will be especially closely watched:
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The 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. The former city comptroller and Mamdani ally Brad Lander has built on shifting public attitudes to attack Representative Dan Goldman’s defense of Israel and ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
A small coffee shop chain created a firestorm with a social media post condemning Goldman, who visited a branch with his 7-year-old daughter on Sunday.
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The 12th Congressional District, from Chelsea and the East Village to the top of Central Park in Manhattan. Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring, endorsed a protégé, Assemblyman Micah Lasher. He is facing seven opponents, including Jack Schlossberg, a Kennedy scion, and Assemblyman Alex Bores, who once worked at the data analytics firm Palantir.
Schlossberg has found it difficult to overcome some of his perceived shortcomings.
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The 13th Congressional District in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Mamdani had been expected to endorse Representative Adriano Espaillat. But last month he instead announced support for a fellow democratic socialist, Darializa Avila Chevalier.
METROPOLITAN diary
Waiting for halal food
Dear Diary:
Not long after I first moved to New York in 2012, I was in line at the Halal Guys on Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street when a well-dressed gentleman walked by.
“You guys are all idiots,” he said, pointing to the 30-plus people in the line and adding a vulgarity for emphasis.
His curt yet charming bluntness only made New York more appealing for me.
— Eric Sze
Eric Sze is a chef and the owner of the restaurants 886, in Manhattan, and Wenwen, in Brooklyn.
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post A Glimmer of Hope for Fixing Penn Station appeared first on New York Times.
