c CB5, from p.12 of what to do with an empty site if MSG moved, he was captivated by an old photo of the building’s skeleton. “ There are foundations down there, there’s a structure that’s actually quite handsome with just an incredibly ugly skin on it,” he said of MSG. “If the Garden were to move... could this structure be recycled, could it be the new commuter pavilion that we need located precisely in that location, that we need above the center of the tracks and platform?” Cha k raba r t i’s desig n would remove several columns of the e x i st i n g st r uct u r e t o r e duc e the cramped feeling of the station, have a glass exterior to let in light, and give commuters a sense of where they are in Midtown. The aim would be to make the area feel more like a public plaza than a dejected train station. Chakrabarti said his firm estimates that this reconfiguration would be very feasible with a $1 billion price tag. “We believe there’s this donut of planning going on with each entity in their own individual fiefdom,” he said of the projects surrounding the current site of MSG and Penn Station. “And we believe this sort of idea injects jelly in the heart of that donut by pulling all of that together in a fairly simple and straightforward way.” According to Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, all the projects tie t o get he r st e m m i n g f r o m t he Gateway Program — which would improve and expand rail infrastructure between Newark and Penn Station — and its expected
impact on the region’s grow th. Wright’s group proposes that the Gateway effort be broadened to create a nother station at East 31st Street and Third Avenue and then tunnel under the East River to reach Sunnyside, Queens. “We have this extraordinar y wealth of rail infrastructure that really makes New York City possible,” Wright said. “Both our subways and our commuter railroads are the lifeblood of our city and region. But the weakest link of it is the northeast corridor and the tunnel under the Hudson River.” In mentioning the northeast corridor, Wright referred to Penn Station’s pivotal position at the center of t he A mt ra k net work that connects Washington, Baltimore, a nd Philadelphia w it h points north to Boston. At present, he explained, the century-old tunnel between Newark and Penn Station only has a two-train capacity, and it was f loode d a nd da m a ged du r i n g Superstorm Sandy in 2012. But by making the Gateway project as ambitious as possible, he asserted, the responsible agencies could coordinate each project to have a positive impact on the others. “ W hat we need to see is t he Gateway project built w ith the m a x i m u m c a p a c i t y i t c a n ,” Wright said. Then, referring to a proposal to expand Penn Station with an annex one block south, he added, “We need Penn South, we need Moynihan Station, which by the way will provide an early relief to allow us to do this kind of work on the West Side. And eventually we’re going to need Penn Station to be the station we all dreamed and talked about.” n
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