Proposals To Redesign Penn Station 'Embarrassment' Due July 28: NY Gov

NEW YORK CITY — The firm that will be tapped for Penn Station's upcoming $6 billion redesign has one major requirement: don't make another "hell."

So said New York's Gov. Kathy Hochul in so many words Thursday, as she announced that the long-awaited project officially entered its design phase.

Proposals for the project are now open and will be due July 28, Hochul said. A winning firm will be selected by late summer or early fall, she said.

“This time we’re going to get it right,” she said.

The announcement Hochul made alongside Mayor Eric Adams and New Jersey's Gov. Phil Murphy served as an implicit that the Penn Station's proposed redesign project's fits and false starts are over.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo famously — or infamously — unveiled a plan for a so-called "Empire Station Complex" last year that local leaders blasted for prioritizing tall skyscrapers over actual improvements to the station.

Cuomo's subsequent resignation brought Hochul into office and a renewed desire to reshape Penn Station.

Hochul in January unveiled a $6-to-7-billion renovation plan to convert Penn into a single-level train hall — thus doubling concourse space — and 460-foot-high atrium.

“And a skylight that reminds you that, yes, the heavens are out there still, despite the feeling that you may be living in hell,” she said Thursday, to laughter.

Indeed, Hochul deliberately evoked memories of the first Penn Station, which was demolished starting in 1963 — an act that her former boss Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "the greatest civic crime in New York History."

The current Penn Station is famously unloved.

“Today, rather than a point of pride, it’s become a source of embarrassment,” Hochul said. “It’s dark, it’s dreary, it’s depressing.”

Murphy echoed Hochul's dim assessment. He said New Jersey residents, whether daily commuters or occasional visitors, deserve a better Penn Station.

"They deserve better than the continually cramped and constantly muggy halls and claustrophobic halls and low-slung ceilings," he said. "They deserve better than the current maze of walkways that deserve their own page on Google Maps.

"And today is a big step forward to providing them with a reimagined Penn Station."

Penn Station is the linchpin of a $3 trillion economic corridor, Murphy said.

The final design for the new Penn Station also will include more than 18 new entrances, eight acres of public space, protected views of the Empire State Building and 1,800 residential units, with 540 that are permanently affordable.

Previous Penn Station coverage:

• New Penn Station Plan Revealed: Hochul Scales Back Cuomo's Vision
  
• Midtown Leaders Slam Cuomo's Empire Station Complex
• Twin Proposals To Remake Penn Station Unveiled By State
• Embattled Cuomo Pushes Skyline-Altering Penn Station Real Estate Plan As Critics Mobilize