At $3.7 billion, Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center PATH terminal will be the world's most expensive subway station when completed.

Santiago Calatrava does not have the best reputation when it comes to designing practical public works. The Valencian architect has achieved great success in winning design commissions across the globe—especially for public works projects like bridges, train stations and cultural centers—but has also attracted criticism for his budget-busting designs.

Mr. Calatrava is practically a persona non grata in Valencia (he is now based in Zurich), where the leftist Esquerra Unida political party has started a website called Calatrava te la clava—loosely translated as "Calatrava bleeds you dry"—on which it accuses the architect of making 100 million euros off the Valencian City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural complex that is widely seen as a symbol of excess, built during Spain's boom years but now a drain on the government's finances as it undergoes a period of fiscal austerity.

He has also come under scrutiny in Italy, where a prosecutor put Mr. Calatrava under investigation for design defects and cost overruns on his Ponte della Costituzione, a pedestrian bridge in Venice.

Mr. Calatrava's most expensive project is found not in Europe, but in lower Manhattan. He was chosen during the heady post-9/11 days to design the World Trade Center PATH terminal—a project whose costs have since ballooned to $3.7 billion, making it by far the most expensive subway station in the world, even after its elaborate, movable roof was scaled back and made stationary.

"There's no question that the World Trade Center"—half of whose costs are in the PATH terminal—"has been a drain on the Port Authority's technological as well as financial resources," said Denise Richardson, managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, to the Wall Street Journal.

So it came as a surprise that the Municipal Art Society, perhaps the city's foremost independent planning group, chose Santiago Calatrava as one of four architects—alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and modernist giants SOM—to present proposals for a new Penn Station, to be unveiled on May 29.

The Observer spoke with Vin Cipolla, president of MAS, about the choice yesterday. He defended the inclusion of Mr. Calatrava in what he called a "provocation" on Penn Station, saying, "I'm a huge fan of Calatrava's work."

Benjamin Kabak, who runs the New York City transit blog Second Avenue Sagas, was not such a huge fan. "Even involving Calatrava" in the Penn Station challenge, he told The Observer, "underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city's leading institutions have." He suggested that money should be spent on increasing transit capacity, especially beneath the Hudson River, not aesthetics—and especially not on an extravagant Santiago Calatrava design.

Mr. Cipolla took issue with that characterization. "I don't believe there's a tradeoff," he said. "I think a compelling design is an essential part of what is successful infrastructure."

"It was controlled by a bunch of rich developers," David Gunn once said of Moynihan Station.

David Gunn was never a fan of Moynihan Station. When he was president of Amtrak during the early George W. Bush years, he pulled the railroad out of the project, which seeks to recreate the glory of the old Pennsylvania Station in the James Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue. At the time, costs were the stated reason: Amtrak was expected to contribute to its new home, and Mr. Gunn said that the railroad had more pressing needs.

Current Amtrak President Joseph Boardman picked the project back up in 2009, and though it's largely unfunded, Amtrak still intends to go through with the move. This, Mr. Gunn told The Observer this afternoon from his home in Nova Scotia, would be a mistake.

"From a transportation point of view," Mr. Gunn said, "it makes no sense." For passengers coming from the 1/2/3 trains, "what the Farley Building does, is make you walk from Seventh Avenue all the way across Eighth Avenue. You'll have to go under the Eighth Avenue subway, then climb up to the [new] head house, which is to the west of Eighth Avenue, over towards Ninth Avenue. And then, you walk back to where the train is! The trains are still going to be between Seventh and Eighth avenues." For passengers arriving at Moynihan Station via the IRT Seventh Avenue Line, Mr. Gunn said, "they've gotta walk almost a mile." (By our estimates, a mile might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the schlep across Manhattan's long avenues won't be negligible.)

"Now the swells"—Mr. Gunn's term for the real estate interests backing Moynihan Station, including the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust—"they told me, 'But people come by cab!' No they don't—Amtrak passengers, a lot of them, come by subway. They're normal people."

Mr. Gunn, who has managed transit agencies in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Toronto, noted that New Jersey Transit built a concourse in 2002 that empties out on Seventh Avenue, reflecting its closer proximity to Manhattan's center of gravity and most of its north-south subway lines.

One way to accomodate the head house at the old Farley Post Office, Mr. Gunn said, without forcing travelers from Seventh Avenue to double back across Eighth Avenue, would be to simply continue to allow passengers to board at the current station. "But they didn't want us to let people on at the old Penn Station, because I think the real estate developers had shops they wanted people to patronize at the Farley head house." (Since then, Related and Vornado have themselves wavered on the retail plan, citing a lack of demand.)

"You ask the swells why it makes sense," continued Mr. Gunn, "and they'll immediately talk about the experience of walking through the [Moynihan] head house. Real travelers—they know the back alleys. Some of the really experienced travelers, they never even go up the mezzanine. They just want to get on the train."

With the LIRR diverting some trains to Grand Central, Penn Station could see Metro-North trains if the MTA goes through with West Side Access.

East Side Access, which will give Long Island Rail Road commuters the choice of arriving at Grand Central Terminal in addition to the current terminus at Pennsylvania Station, may get all the buzz and billions in capital funding, but it's the Bronx and the West Side that may be getting new regional rail stations.

West Side Access, as the plan is being called, would involve building a number of new stations within New York City, on the West Side and the Bronx, which would see direct service to Penn Station operated by Metro-North Railroad. The plan has been under consideration for decades, but will finally be added to the MTA's next five-year capital construction program due out in 2014, according to Newsday. Compared to the $8.24 billion East Side Access project, West Side Access would be downright cheap: in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," according to MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan.

The first phase would see four new stations built in the Bronx—at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester and Hunts Point—which would be served along Amtrak's existing Hell Gate Line, entering Manhattan via the Triborough Bridge and Queens on the Long Island Rail Road's tracks into Penn Station. Commuters using six stations in Westchester County—New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Rye and Port Chester—would be able to choose trains going directly to Penn Station, in addition to Metro-North's current Grand Central service. They would use time slots freed up by the diversion of some LIRR trains to Grand Central once East Side Access opens.

The second phase would reactivate the West Side Line, now used by Amtrak, for commuter rail. This line is currently only used for Northeast Corridor service north of the city, and runs beneath Riverside Park and the Henry Hudson Parkway. The tracks, once part of the same line that continued south along what is now the High Line, would see Metro-North trains from the Hudson Line enter Penn Station from the west. West Side commuters would also likely get two new stations: one at 125th Street by Columbia, and one somewhere around 57th or 59th Street.

The one at 125th Street is a sure thing, the MTA's press office told The Observer, whereas the station on the boundary between Hell's Kitchen and the Upper West Side is under consideration.

Co-op City, the nation's largest housing complex with a population in the tens of thousands, would be the biggest winner in West Side Access. According to the MTA, the ride from the new Co-op City station to Penn Station would take just 27 minutes—about half the time it currently takes by express bus or a shuttle to the 6 train.

The two new stations on the West Side would be less useful, though, due to American commuter railroads' antiquated operating practices, which make Metro-North much less attractive than alternative modes with cheaper and more frequent service—the 1 train at 125th Street, and crosstown bus service on 57th Street.

George Haikalis, a transit activist and all-around gadfly (the mere mention of his name has been known to elicit sighs and eye-rolls at the MTA), suggested two more stations for the reactivated regional rail line: one at 42nd Street, and another at 168th Street. The 42nd Street station could sit near the axed 7 train station in Hell's Kitchen at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, Mr. Haikalis told The Observer by telephone, and the 168th Street station could sit below the Columbia University Medical Center, two miles north of the planned 125th Street station.

Metro-North downplayed the possibility of stops at those locations, however, citing their proximity to Penn Station and 125th Street. "I'm not sure if it was ever looked at, but it's not being looked at now," said Metro-North spokesperson Marjorie Anders.

To maximize the utility of the new stations and service, Mr. Haikalis also recommended that the MTA look to Europe and Asia to reform its regional rail practices, running them more like the subway system, with fewer on-board staff, more frequent service and cheaper fares.

"Now that the MTA chair position is vacant," Mr. Haikalis said, "the governor ought to pick someone who's knowledgeable about the rest of the world with regards to regional rail. He's sitting on assets that would be far more valuable for riders, and even for developers"—but not if the new stations are only seeing a couple of trains per hour.

History in the unmaking. (WNYC)

The laments over the demise of the original Penn Station are so well worn by now that they have almost collapsed in on themselves like the original building. It was only last week that we were fretting over the failed protests of 40 years ago to save the damn thing. Was it really that long ago? Feels like only yesterday.

That is what makes the revelation that a tiny piece of the original building has been hiding in plain sight for decades now. Historicist and foamers rejoice. An old iron and glass entryway has been uncovered in the bowels of Penn Station by an intrepid reporter at WNYC.

TN has learned that this entryway–part of the original Penn Station–was walled off in 1963, when the above-ground part of the station was razed. [...] In the early 1990s, Penn Station underwent a major renovation, its first since the original building was demolished. That’s when workers took down the wall and discovered the entryway. “It was found exactly where it is now,” Arena said. “The contractor cleaned it, painted it and put in windows.” It is now a deep umber color.

As far as we can tell, the entryway went back into service quietly–no announcement was made about the salvaged piece of history. It’s safe to assume that a large part of the station’s 600,000 weekday travelers pass by without an inkling of its provenance. In places, the paint on the entryway’s columns is worn away from the hordes of commuters brushing past it, wanting only to leave Penn Station.

After at first doubting the report, an MTA spokesman confirmed to WNYC's Tranportation Nation blog that the portico was indeed original, and as the picture shows, is somewhere in the Long Island Railroad concourse, the lower level section that is indeed the most depressing part of the third world station.

The discovery is fitting given the reawakening of a grand train hall on the West Side. Despite futurist plans, Amtrak recently revealed that it will be using much of the old Farley Post Office structure as the marquee feature an a Moynihan Station that we continue to pray—but doubt ever—will be built. At least we have our new old archway.

The end of the beginning. (NYC-Architecture.com)

By now it is received wisdom that the city’s preservation movement got its start the day Penn Station was torn down, and it has been galvanized ever since “to put a stop to the wanton destruction of our greatest buildings” by “would-be vandals” of the real estate trade, as a protest ad published 50 years ago tomorrow once loudly declared in The Times.

Both sides are still at it, but The Times’ Building Blocks columnist David Dunlap provides a tantalizing window on how it all began, including a glimpse at the above ad an a protest that followed on Seventh Avenue, a doomed fight that shocked generations into action.

On that 86-degree summer evening 50 years ago, commuters were greeted by the sight of more than 100 buttoned-down and white-gloved protesters marching around the colossal colonnade at the station’s entrance.

“Save Penn Station,” their signs said, in nicely formed letters. (Architects. Of course.) “Don’t Sell Our City Short.” “Save Our Heritage.” “Action Not Apathy.”

Philip Johnson was impeccably present, in the company of the peerless Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, who would soon be its president. There was Aline B. Saarinen, the widow of Eero Saarinen, who had been until 1959 an associate art critic at The New York Times. Agbany counted Eleanor Roosevelt, Stewart Alsop, Jane Jacobs and Norman Mailer among its supporters, along with many of the most respected names in architecture and architectural criticism.

[…]

[Architect Peter] Samton, who was 27, recalled being deputized to get Mr. Johnson down to Penn Station that day. “He said, ‘I have a meeting with Mrs. Parkinson; I can’t come.’ We said, ‘Well, bring her along and you can have your meeting while you parade.’”

“The fact that he came meant that we got publicity,” Mr. Samton said the other day, after spreading out Agbany memorabilia in the comfortably modernist living and working space he created on the parlor floor of an Upper West Side brownstone.

Yet the most remarkable and unfortunate fact may be the group’s inability to stop the project. On the one hand, how could they? This was a bunch of architects, planners and concerned citizens taking on not only City Hall and Robert Moses but an emerging Big Real Estate and Progress Itself. That preservationists have been able to achieve so much since, to the consternation of many, is an impressive feat.

Yet one need look at the inability of Sarah Jessica Parker to save either St. Vincent’s Hospital or her husband Matthew Broderick’s opposition to NYU to see that these victories remain few and far between.

Greatest of all may be the fact that we continue to fight the good fight at all.

Not just the banal concourses of Phase 1 that have bandied about before—nothing new there—but honest to god interiors of the grand train hall meant to restore Penn Station to its former glory inside the old Farley Post office. In a bid for both historical preservation and cost savings, the roof of the post office will no longer be ripped off and replaced with a new glass ceiling, but instead the existing one, with its massive steel trusses will be preserved.

Naturally, the very next morning, The Observer was hot on the trail of those renderings. (Really, do we care about anything else?) Sadly, one bureaucrat or press handler after another said, well, those are preliminary designs, so we're not really ready to reveal them.

But Amtrak just did, even if it didn't mean to, in its latest report on high-speed rail for the Northeast Corridor (coming someday, we promise, fingers crossed), which the fine folks over at WNYC's Transportation Nation picked up. Therein lie the renderings we were after, along with a lot of other cool high-speed rail pics that will keep us dreaming until we can finally get on board.

That is set for 2025, but if Moynihan timelines are any indication, not to mention the deaths of such projects as ARC, then 2055 does not seem unreasonable.

The city’s landmarks preservation movement came about because of what happened to the old Penn Station. In the decades since, beautiful buildings have been spared the ravages of “progress” and entire blocks have been preserved thanks to the landmarking process.

The Bloomberg Administration has expanded on these preservation efforts by increasing the number of historic districts citywide from 64 to 107. Now, as the administration nears its end times, it wants to add or expand eight districts, which would affect more than 3,000 buildings.

Preservation of historic buildings clearly is important. Protection of an entire block often can add, not detract, from a neighborhood’s value. But the creation or expansion of entire districts places new burdens on developers in a city that already is a tough one in which to do business.

To be sure, the city’s preservation efforts are very important, and they have saved many an jewel from wanton destruction. But New York is a dynamic city—it always has been. Developers need to be assured that projects will not become encased in red tape. Preservation regulations save historic buildings, but they can also inhibit investment.

New efforts to preserve thousands of buildings must include a system to keep development costs down and minimize red tape. New York, after all, is not a museum. The city must be allowed to evolve, even as it preserves the best of its past.

One Penn Plaza. (Courtesy Property Shark)

The firm signed a deal for 20,599 square feet on the 51st floor of the soaring 57-story office building, which is owned by the office REIT Vornado and is one of the largest and most prominent towers in the direct vicinity of the city’s busiest transit hub Penn Station.

Penson is nearly doubling in the size in the deal. Previously it had occupied about 12,000 square feet on the floor, which is about 36,000 square feet in size. Asking rents for the space are in the high $60s per square foot but those involved in the deal said they could not divulge the economics of the lease, which through negotiations is likely to be lower than the ask.

Sean Black and Bill Peters, executives at the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, represented Penson in the 10-year deal. Both said that expansion would allow Penson to grow as well as potentially consolidate other office locations it has in the city.

Vornado is represented in house by a leasing team led by its director of leasing Glen Weiss. Mr. Weiss wasn’t available for comment.

“This deal is a little contrary to the market right now,” Mr. Black said, noting Penson’s strong growth at a time when the financial sector’s normally voracious appetite for office space has appeared sated by the uncertain impact of of government regulations that have yet to take effect, an ongoing Euro debt crisis, as well as general concerns about the health of the economy overall.

Penson provides clearing and settlement services and technology for financial clients as well as securities, futures and derivatives processing products and services.

Mr. Black said that he had scoured the market for space in case the company decided to relocate but eventually found that staying put was the best option.

“We ended up doubling back to the building largely because this is where most of their employees came in from, it matched the commute patterns,” Mr. Black said. “And with this deal they got incentives from the landlord that will allow them to upgrade the space.”

Dgeiger@Observer.com

Half time?

Despite his lack of formal design training, Michael Kimmelman has excited many readers, both architecturally adept and not, with his focus on urban issues. The Observer has begun to hear some grumbles, however, that that is all he cares about—bike lanes here, old housing projects over there, riverfronts a world away. What does he think of the Atlantic Yards apartment buildings or the World Trade Center Memorial. Won’t he weigh in on some capital-a Architecture already?

Well, today, as always seems to happen, he has done us one better.
What started out as a lament for the loss of Penn Station, which by our math Mr. Kimmelman may just remember from his days as a Manhattan youth, turns into an ingenious idea for the salvation of one of the most ill-gotten spots in the entire city. While everyone was thinking, isn’t Michael late to the party, weren’t these ideas done away with before, we get something entirely new and clever:

The thought is: Move Madison Square Garden to the southern end of the Javits site, at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. That is a prime location in what is hoped to become the busy intersection of a new Midtown South. The state, in conjunction with the city, would provide the Garden’s owners with a turnkey, or at least a very generous, deal: a new riverfront arena, partly financed by the substantial air rights gained in return for acquiring the Garden’s present site.

The new arena, unlike the current Garden, would compete as an up-to-date sports and entertainment center with the one rising at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. It would stand at the northern culmination of the completed High Line, and at the doorstep of a redeveloped Hudson Yards, where the new extension of the No. 7 subway line from Times Square will stop. Generations of New York sports fans have attachments to the Garden, but it has been moved several times before. The present arena is a flimsy, aging eyesore, notwithstanding the millions that its owners have lately been pouring into refurbishment — money that would have been amortized by the time a prospective new arena could be made ready.

Why should the public subsidize a private arena? To serve the larger public good: the money would go toward improving the lives of millions of New Yorkers and others who use Penn Station. Both the city and state have legal sticks to compel the Garden to move, among them a special permit the city grants, and could decline to renew, which allows the Garden to operate at its present site. But that route carries its own costs, political and financial.
It’s the kind of idea that makes you wonder, why didn’t I think of that.

And it in the middle of it all, we get a very elegant explanation for just what makes the current station so bad, one almost fit to stand alongside Vincent Scully and Ada Louis Huxtable’s famous proclamations:

To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.

What is the value of architecture? It can be measured, culturally, humanely and historically, in the gulf between these two places.

It can also be measured in column inches, maybe even in a book deal.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC;

Vacancies abound. (Vornado)

All that agita for nothing.

After fighting the bullish Steve Rothto save the Empire State Building's spot on the skyline, Tony Malkin has won a reprieve—thanks to the miserable economy.

According to the Post, Vornado is putting off construction of the 1,200-foot tower atop the Hotel Pennsylvania "until market rents reach a point where it’s worthwhile to redevelop the site with an office building."

Instead, the developer is going the unusual root of possibly investing in a building it may well tear down.

“It could cost $30 million just to renovate the rooms,” said one executive who was not authorized to speak on the record. “It’s 1,000 rooms and everything adds up.”

Vornado would also commit millions of dollars more to update the lobby and common areas.

The move makes some sense, though. While the office market may not be clamoring for more room, demand for hotels is still soaring.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC