(HELLGATE) Neil deMause, August 8, 2022

What would it cost to undo one of the city’s great historical mistakes? And is it even worth it?

If you haven’t been closely following New York state’s plans for a major redevelopment of Penn Station and the area around it, suffice to say, they are a lot. Initially proposed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo as a vision for allowing real estate megabaron Vornado to build ten supertall buildings in Midtown and use the proceeds to redo everyone’s least favorite train station, it was subsequently downsized by current Governor Kathy Hochul into a slightly less grandiose set of still-ginormous buildings. This would require demolishing much of the area, as well as billions of dollars in spending by the Empire State Development agency, money Hochul pledged New York would make back in new tax revenues. (More on this claim later.)

Hovering over all of this, almost literally, is Madison Square Garden. When the old Penn Station building, much-mourned by public space advocates and architecture stans, was razed in the 1960s in anticipation of a glorious train-free, car-based future, it was to make way for the fourth iteration of the home of the Knicks and Rangers. (Versions I and II had been located across Manhattan in the East 20s, lending the Garden its now-geographically incorrect name; version III is now the site of Worldwide Plaza.) 

For more than half a century since, many have dreamed of moving the Garden somewhere, anywhere, to free up the space above Penn Station so that commuters no longer have to scuttle quite so much like rats in the darkness.

Recently, there’s been a glimmer of light for advocates of moving MSG. The Garden itself is owned by James Dolan, the former head of Cablevision and current sports micromanager and horrific roots-rock frontman, who bought the arena and its teams from Viacom in the ’90s. The land underneath it is owned by Amtrak, which inherited it when Penn Central, the private railroad giant with roots going back to the 1840s, succumbed to bankruptcy in 1974. Dolan also holds a special “operating permit” that the City requires for all public venues with more than 2,500 seats.

That operating permit, most recently renewed by the city council in 2013, is set to expire next July 31. If the council allows it to lapse, the City would theoretically be empowered to padlock MSG’s gates if seating isn’t reduced to below 2,500 capacity. And this has led a whole lot of people to dream about what could be if the Garden were moved somewhere, somehow.

“We used to have a magnificent Pennsylvania Station, and in 1964 it was actually not demolished but decapitated,” architect Alexandros Washburn of the Grand Penn Community Alliance told NY1’s Inside City Hall last month. Removing the Garden, he and other advocates argue, would allow for anything from expansive skylights atop the current underground warren to reconstructing the original McKim, Mead & White edifice, undoing one of the city’s greatest historical mistakes. 

“If this piece of the puzzle could move, as it’s done several times before, now our options for Penn Station are huge,” said Washburn. “We can rebuild the late, great Penn Station—every foundation is still there—or we can come up with things that are more 21st-century.”

All of which sounds lovely, but it comes with a couple of catches. In a city that is already full to the brim, where could space be found for a multiblock behemoth like a pro sports arena? And perhaps even more important: Who would pay the cost of erecting an MSG V in an era when arena prices start at upwards of a billion dollars?

Source: Hell Gate, The New York State