Amtrak said on Wednesday that it had chosen a developer to remake dreary Pennsylvania Station in New York City, one day after Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said that the federal government intended to spend $8 billion on the project.<\/p>\n
Mr. Duffy and Amtrak\u2019s board of directors announced that they had chosen Penn Transformation Partners from among three qualified bidders as master developer of the project that they said will transform the subterranean transit hub into a \u201cbrand new, world-class station.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Duffy has said that work on the project is scheduled to begin before the end of next year, even though Amtrak, which owns the station, has not presented a detailed plan to the public or explained how it would be funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder President Trump\u2019s historic leadership, the days of Penn Station\u2019s cramped hallways, broken infrastructure and snarled rail lines are numbered,\u201d Mr. Duffy said in a statement. \u201c2027 can\u2019t come soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amtrak said that the project would involve building a \u201cgrand entrance\u201d on Eighth Avenue leading to a new train hall, replacing \u201ccramped, decrepit walkways with open beautiful concourses,\u201d and expanding track capacity and other improvements.<\/p>\n
Making improvements to Penn Station, the nation\u2019s busiest transportation hub, has been complicated by the presence of Madison Square Garden atop the station. The Garden was built on the site after the original Penn Station, beloved for its classical architecture, was demolished.<\/p>\n
Some architects and urban planners have called over the years for the Garden to be moved so that a more inviting station could be built. But Amtrak made clear that the arena would be staying put.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new design takes inspiration from this lost architectural gem while fitting with the major structures there currently, particularly Madison Square Garden and Moynihan Train Hall,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Penn Transformation Partners is led by Halmar International, a construction firm.<\/p>\n
In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Duffy told Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, \u201cWe\u2019re going to give $8 billion to rebuild Penn Station.\u201d That was the first public declaration of a financial commitment of that size from the federal government toward the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou welcome that, right?\u201d Mr. Duffy said to her.<\/p>\n
No mention was made of that $8 billion commitment in the announcement on Wednesday from the Transportation Department and Amtrak. An Amtrak spokesman said the final cost and schedule for the project were still to be determined.<\/p>\n
Stefanos Chen contributed reporting.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amtrak said on Wednesday that it had chosen a developer to remake dreary Pennsylvania Station in New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6922,5462,12616,1452,29553,3279,222,9,24,55,54,56,22153,53665,7288,29554,22152,12299,608,18544,1069,1876],"class_list":["post-238580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-amtrak","tag-architecture","tag-building-construction","tag-donald-j","tag-duffy","tag-infrastructure-public-works","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-pennsylvania-station-manhattan","tag-railroads","tag-restoration-and-renovation","tag-sean-p","tag-stations-and-terminals-passenger","tag-transit-systems","tag-transportation","tag-transportation-department-us","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}