Five months after Penn Station czar Andy Byford promised New Yorkers a “top-to-bottom transformation of every aspect of Penn Station,” most of the options to overhaul the nation’s busiest rail hub seem the same as they were before the feds took over the project last year.
Earlier this week, Amtrak, the federal passenger railway that controls the Midtown station, quietly released a short-listed group of developers selected to rebuild the station, two of which should be familiar to those who’ve watched the project.
The announcement included no details on the plans put forth by any of the three developers, but two should be familiar to New Yorkers who have watched efforts to rebuild the station progress.
Among the short-listed firms is Grand Penn Partners, the corporate face of a plan to rebuild Penn Station as a Neo-classical complex.
As previously reported by the Daily News, the Grand Penn plan is backed by Tom Klingenstein — chairman of the right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute and a major Trump donor — who has written previously in favor of Classical architecture as “anti-woke.”
As of last year, the Grand Penn plan proposed building a grand, columned entrance on Seventh Ave., reminiscent of the original Penn Station.
The Grand Penn plan would also add a park between the new station and Moynihan Train Hall, opening up green space in one of Manhattan’s more congested communities.
The catch is that the proposal would require Madison Square Garden, which currently sits atop Penn Station, to be moved elsewhere — a proposition MSG kingpin James Dolan has repeatedly dismissed.
Another of the short-listed firms is Penn Transformation Partners, a consortium funded by Halmar, the U.S. arm of Italian firm ASTM Group, which has been hawking a Penn Station plan for several years.
The most recent ASTM plan would involve a “grand entrance” on Eighth Ave. in space purchased from Madison Square Garden, but otherwise the sports arena would stay in place.
The third firm on Amtrak’s short list — Penn Forward Now, funded by investment manager Fengate — is a mystery. A website associated with the consortium lists architectural, financial, planning and building firms connected with the effort, but no renderings or descriptions of a vision for Penn Station.
An inquiry to the sole email address listed on its website went unanswered, and a countdown on the site reached 00:00:00 on Wednesday evening without any further information being published.
An Amtrak spokesman did not immediately respond when asked for further details on the firms or their proposals.
Amtrak officials have said they plan to pick a developer by this spring in order to keep to an ambitious timeline to have shovels in the ground by the end of next year — what Deputy Secretary of Transportation Steven Bradbury called working on “Trump time.” However, no public “request for proposals” could be found on Amtrak’s procurement website Thursday.
“As of today, a pretty major piece of their portfolio is not on there,” said Rachael Fauss, a senior policy advisor for good-government group Reinvent Albany. “It’s standard practice to release RFPs to the public.”
It’s likely that one of the three developers mentioned above will be picked for the project.
Gov. Hochul — who has been a proponent of the federal takeover of Penn Station’s redesign and the $1.2 billion in state money that decision freed up — called on Amtrak to be more forthcoming Thursday.
“This could end up in a good place, but we all need to know more,” she told the Daily News. “There must be transparency.”
