Hell's Kitchen Board To Grill Port Authority On Bus Terminal Plan

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — Members of a Hell's Kitchen community board will get the chance to question Port Authority officials this week about the agency's ambitious plan to replace its aging bus terminal on the edge of the neighborhood.

Port Authority representatives will present the plans in a series of Community Board 4 meetings, starting Wednesday with the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen land use committee. They will return to present for the transportation planning committee on Feb. 17, and for the full board on March 3.

The transit agency first unveiled plans last month to replace its busy but maligned Midtown bus terminal with a glassy new complex that would expand passenger space by 40 percent.

The existing bus terminal is the busiest in the world, serving about 260,000 passengers each weekday before the pandemic. The 186-gate building has become infamous, however, for its decrepit facilities and inability to accommodate daily passenger rushes.

More than 30 proposals to replace the terminal have been put forward since 2013, but not all have gone over well in the surrounding neighborhood.

In particular, one 2016 proposal, which would have involved seizing and demolishing several blocks of Hell's Kitchen, collapsed amid harsh community opposition. Community Board 4 wrote at the time that the plan would entail "obliterating a neighborhood."

The new proposal would include no such seizures of private property, which "was opposed at the outset of public outreach by the local community," the agency wrote in a detailed scoping report for the new proposal that was released on Jan. 21.

Port Authority does, however, plan to pay for the estimated $10 billion in construction costs partly by selling air rights on top of and around the terminal, letting developers build up to four high-rise towers.

The neighborhood street safety group CHEKPEDS encouraged residents this week to attend the CB4 meetings, urging them to press Port Authority on how the development would affect air quality and whether it would help get buses off nearby streets.

Wednesday's CB4 committee meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom.

Related coverage: Port Authority Plans To Replace 'Hell On Earth' Bus Terminal