Trump Administration Selects Development Team for $8B Penn Station Rebuild

At an $8 billion price tag, the Trump administration has a mostly formed plan to revamp Pennsylvania Station that keeps Madison Square Garden in place.

Amtrak and the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced Wednesday after a Senate hearing that it had selected a master developer entity called the Penn Transformation Partners, which includes Halmar and Skanska, to complete a major rebuild of the transit hub.

The Trump administration will begin construction contract negotiations, obtaining permits and completing a “service optimization study.”

“We took over the transformation of New York Penn Station because the project was behind schedule, over budget and hopelessly mismanaged,” USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “In selecting Penn Transformation Partners (Halmar) and their innovative plan, we are one step closer to delivering a world-class travel hub that daily commuters and travelers have dreamed of for decades.”

The new plan is likely to be a crowd-pleaser.

While creating more open and beautiful concourses for straphangers, USDOT says it will also increase track capacity while considering limited through-running trains from New Jersey to Long Island and vice versa, a concept promoted by transit advocates for years.

The retail will also get another revamp after a pandemic-era renovation by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority while Madison Square Garden will get fresh cladding for a “classical look,” according to USDOT.

New York state under two governors, Andrew Cuomo and then Kathy Hochul, struggled with the task of redeeming Penn Station, initiating multiple plans, including a dissolved public-private partnership with Vornado Realty Trust to help pay for the project, which never truly got off the ground.

There was even an effort to not renew Madison Square Garden’s operating permit, with the New York City Council deciding in 2023 to issue only a five-year permit, just in case a plan for Penn Station got traction under state management.

In April 2025, after a series of contentious interactions between President Donald Trump and Hochul, the White House took control of Penn Station’s redevelopment from the state and the MTA, handing the task over to Amtrak, which owns the station.

Since then, the Trump administration has appointed former New York City Transit President Andy Byford to the Amtrak board as a special adviser before launching a request for proposal process in August 2025.

A month ago, USDOT announced it would fund $4.7 billion worth of transit improvements along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between Washington, D.C., and New York City to improve commuter efficiency.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.