Pack up your goalie pads, Igor Shesterkin. You and the New York Rangers — not to mention the Knicks — might be getting a new home if Grand Penn Community Alliance’s wildly ambitious plan to revamp Pennsylvania Station gets approved.
Alexandros Washburn, chief architect of the nonprofit Grand Penn, proposed a bold idea to redesign Penn Station into a more vibrant transit hub that will feature a larger transit hall with massive windows — far from the gloomy and claustrophobic concourse commuters currently schlep through — and an outdoor space equivalent in size to Bryant Park.
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To make the outdoor space a reality, Madison Square Garden would move across Seventh Avenue to the empty site where the Hotel Pennsylvania once stood.
“How centrally located the existing MSG is right now is not necessarily the best for access,” Washburn said at a press conference Tuesday. “The railroads say that MSG won’t move. They state the problem as: How do we build an underground train station? And, worse than that, they split the project in two. The [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] is taking on what’s called the improvement, and Amtrak is taking on what’s called the expansion.”
Washburn claims this is the most inefficient way to redesign Penn Station — a project that has been in the works since former governor turned mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo was in office. When Gov. Kathy Hochul replaced Cuomo in 2022, she vowed to continue with plans to improve Penn Station, having called it “one scary place,” as Commercial Observer previously reported.
“Imagine if Grand Central were designed in halves,” Washburn said. “It’s just not right, and there’s been a stasis over time. Nothing’s happened, and part of that is because it’s the wrong way to state the problem.”
Washburn also claims his proposal can be completed in the same time frame and for roughly the same cost — $7.5 billion — as the plan put forward by the MTA. The MTA’s plan leaves MSG right where it is.
It is hard to imagine the Dolan family, which owns MSG, would be eager to tear it down and move it across the street, especially considering its current location comes with a permanent property tax exemption — an incentive dating back to 1982 as a way to keep professional sports teams in New York City.
MSG did not respond to a request for comment.
Moving Madison Square Garden would also require Vornado Realty Trust to get on board, as the firm owns a significant swath of the area where Grand Penn is proposing the new arena should go.
Vornado declined to comment.
There is still a long way to go between concept and execution considering the list of companies and agencies — including the federal government — that would need to say yes to make Grand Penn a reality, but Washburn is confident it can be done.
“I’m remarkably confident, actually,” he told Commercial Observer after the press conference. “I’ve been working on this for a long time, and I think I’m most confident because I think, finally, there’s a realization of the role of dealmaking between private and public sectors that’s necessary for infrastructure at this scale.”
Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.
