A group of New York’s federal, state, and local elected officials gathered across the street from Madison Square Garden on Sunday to demand answers about how the Trump administration handed control of the Penn Station renovation to a private developer consortium behind closed doors, as first reported by AMNY.
Penn Transformation Partners was quietly named “master developer” of the country’s busiest transit hub. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Assembly Member Tony Simone, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and others signed a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy demanding to know how that selection happened without public input, cost transparency, or participation from the agencies and communities that use the station every day.
“This process has been conducted in secret, without public input, without transparency on costs, and without meaningful participation from the public agencies, elected officials, and communities that will be most affected by this decision. It is unacceptable, and we will not let it stand,” the letter reads. It continues: “a project of this scale, affecting the busiest transit hub in the nation, billions of dollars in public investment, and the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, cannot be handed out through a closed-door process controlled by Washington.”
The renovation would give Penn Station a new entrance to the train hall on Eighth Avenue and expand track capacity. An earlier proposal floated moving Madison Square Garden, but this version leaves the arena where it is. The project affects hundreds of thousands of daily riders. The officials also raised questions about who controls the infrastructure and who pays for it.
Nadler focused on the money. Despite reports of a much larger federal commitment, he said Washington has contributed only $43 million to the project. That means the majority of the cost will land on taxpayers, he said. He also warned the funding could come with strings attached.
“The President of the United States, himself a real estate developer, has allowed his administration to put one of the most valuable public infrastructure projects in America into the hands of private interests with every incentive to turn Penn Station into a real estate deal, that should outrage every New Yorker,” Nadler said. “Penn Station’s future should be shaped by riders, New York City, New York State, and the public interest, not by a backroom process that benefits politically connected developers.”
Simone said the ongoing construction at the White House is proof Trump should not be running the project.
“This is beyond unacceptable, and New Yorkers should be outraged, and they will be once they learn about this land grab. Look at the state of the White House today, dominated by an empty pit where the East Wing once stood. It is gross and disgusting. So, get your hands off our Penn Station,” Simone said. “We cannot allow Midtown to be scarred by another Trump failed project. New Yorkers’ worst developer became America’s worst president. He should never be in charge of building anything in the city ever again.”
Trump was expected at the Garden on Monday evening for the third game of the Knicks’ finals run. Hoylman-Sigal referenced the visit.
“We know Donald Trump will be here on Monday. He may think he’s going to be measuring the drapes at Penn Station, but we hope that New Yorkers give him a piece of their mind that they want New York to control Penn Station, not Donald Trump, not the federal government,” Hoylman-Sigal said.
Featured image: Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
