New York should decide “once and for all” whether to move Madison Square Garden or leave it atop a rebuilt Penn Station, said the official in charge of that rebuilding.
“This is our opportunity to fix this issue once and for all,” said the official, Andy Byford, the special adviser to Amtrak on what he calls the transformation of Penn Station. “Whether the Garden moves or the Garden stays. Let’s do the right thing and give New York truly a world class station, and not leave it still blighted.”
Byford spoke at an online town hall hosted by City Council member Erik Bottcher, who brokered the City Council’s decision two years ago to give The Garden only a short extension on its permit to operate the arena where it has been since the original Penn Station was torn down in the 1960’s.
That permit, the shortest ever granted, will expire in September 2028, less than a year after Byford has promised to have “shovels in the ground” on a new Penn Station. So, the future of the Garden and the future of Penn Station are now moving down parallel tracks at roughly the same speed.
Bottcher, who has long advocated for moving the Garden, asked Byford if there was any potential to do that? Can a truly great station happen with MSG there, Bottcher asked?
These, Byford said, were questions to be considered during the process he is running to select a Master Developer for a new Penn Station. He said he expected to receive proposals that moved the Garden and others that did not.
Amtrak, however, does not control that decision, Byford noted, since it owns the station below street grade but not the arena and office towers built on top of it when the fiscally spiraling Pennsylvania railroad tore down its original McKim Mead & White station and sold the right to build on top.
It is the legacy of that decapitation that Byford is now trying to repair.
Byford said he had spoken with the owner of the Garden, James Dolan, whom he described as justly proud of his arena and in no rush to move.
“To be fair to the owners of Madison Square Garden, they ain’t going to move until and unless a new Garden, a new facility is built, because otherwise, literally, the Rangers and the Knicks will be homeless,” Byford said. “I don’t think anyone wants that. And that, in itself, would add cost and time.”
Byford as well as members of the Trump administration have stressed the importance of completing the Penn Station transformation swiftly. “Trump time,” is how transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it.
The sixty odd years The Garden has been in its current location make it the oldest arena in the National Basketball Association. But Byford noted that Dolan had spent a billion dollars to renovate the arena, a project completed in 2013. The Knicks and Rangers, also owned by Dolan, played through the renovation, although a third team, the New York Liberty, was forced to relocate temporarily to Newark.
“Anything’s possible,” Byford said of moving the Garden. “That could be done. Of course, you could. You could take extra time and build a new Garden. But equally, you can have a world class station with a new single level concourse and much better entrances, fully accessible, much more ambient, natural light. You can have all of that and leave the Garden in situ.”
One prominent proposal calls for moving the Garden across Seventh Avenue to the site of the recently demolished Pennsylvania Hotel. That site, however, is not large enough by itself.
“You need to have a double block in order to accommodate the Garden,” Byford explained. “The garden can’t be fit in just one normal block.”
Moreover, the Pennsylvania Hotel site is owned by Vornado Realty, which says it wants to build a luxury office tower as tall as the Empire State building on the property.
A competing proposal, however, leaves the Garden where it is but purchases from Dolan the theatre on the Eight Avenue side of The Garden. The theater would be demolished and replaced with a large entrance way to the station.
“So, for various reasons, then, we are leaving that question open,” Byford said of moving The Garden. “I expect there to be proposals predicated on the Garden staying put, and proposals predicated on the Garden moving, and we will then evaluate them against all those variables: how much it costs, what the environmental impacts are, how long would it take? We’ll factor it all into the mix and then make a considered and very, very carefully thought through recommendation.”
Bottcher asked Byford if there was a third option, improving Penn Station in a way that would leave “flexibility” if Dolan agreed later to move the Garden. That, replied Byford, was a poor idea.
“I can’t really see how that would happen,” Byford said, “and I think we’ve got to be careful here that we don’t end up blighting ourselves in that if you were to leave that question open, how much would you really want to spend on the new station? If you thought, well, then you’re going to have to come back and do it all again if the Garden suddenly moves. So, I think this is our opportunity to fix this issue once and for all. Whether the Garden moves or the garden stays. Let’s do the right thing and give New York truly a world class station, and not leave it still blighted.”
He also noted that it would be unsettling for other parts of the neighborhood to have the potential for relocating the Garden hanging over them.
Bottcher, who is running in a crowded field for the congressional seat now held by Representative Jerrold Nadler, did not weigh in during the town hall with Byford.
But after the session he told a reporter: “I have long believed that moving Madison Square Garden would give us the opportunity to create the grand train station that New York City deserves. I am very happy that Andy Byford is on the team gathering the best ideas from across the country and working to chart a real path forward.”
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