Manhattan Electeds Escalate Attack on Trump-backed Penn Station Plan

Manhattan elected officials escalated their assault on the Trump administration’s selection of a Master Developer to renovate Penn Station.

“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,” the eight officials, led by Representative Jerrold Nadler, wrote in a letter. “It is unacceptable—and we will not let it stand.”

The letter was addressed to the US Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, who last year seized control of the renovation project from the MTA, which he said had bungled the job. The federal officials have since moved at what they call “the speed of Trump,” selecting a development consortium, Penn Transformation Partners, to rebuild the station.

“The Trump Administration negotiated the future of Penn Station behind closed doors with politically connected developers — developers who have direct ties to Trump donors and who have lobbied the White House directly for this contract,” the Manhattan officials protested. “No RFP was released during the solicitation process, and the selection criteria on how the winner bidding was chosen is unknown. No full costs were disclosed. No public hearings were held. No explanation was provided for how the public interest would be protected.”

The elected officials noted in their letter that one of the partners in Penn Transformation Partners is Vornado Realty Trust, the largest property owner around Penn Station. Vornado’s founder Steven Roth, is a supporter and sometimes business partner of President Trump.

Five of the eight signers appeared at a press conference outside Madison Square Garden on June 7 condemning what was branded a “land grab” by the Trump Administration.

Penn Transformation’s lead partners are two global development firms, Halmar, the American subsidiary of the Italian company, ASTM, and Skanska, based in Stockholm.

Straus News reported last week that Penn Transformation’s plan envisions Vornado building a luxury office tower across Seventh Avenue from Penn Station and then making payments in lieu of taxes to help defray the costs of rebuilding the station. The elected officials noted in their letter that legislation to allow Amtrak to collect such payments was advancing in congress over Rep. Nadler’s objections.

The legislation, the officials noted, “would grant Amtrak sweeping new authority over the redevelopment of Penn Station and other federally connected rail stations—authority that directly undermines local control, local decision making, and the ability of New York City and State to protect their communities and their taxpayers.

Five of the eight signers appeared at a press conference outside Madison Square Garden on June 7 condemning what was branded a “land grab” by the Trump Administration.

“It would give Amtrak the ability to own, lease, ground-lease, or enter into private development agreements around intercity rail stations. It would exempt Amtrak linked projects from certain state and local taxes, assessments, building laws, and zoning requirements—stripping New York City and State of their rightful authority overland use and development in their own communities.”

Proposals and Protests

The protest, which also included a news conference outside Penn Station, was full of political ironies. For one thing, several of the signers of the letter, including Representative Nadler, had three years ago endorsed the core element of the Halmar plan that was just selected by The Trump administration.

That core element is the purchase from Madison Square Garden of its theater on Eighth Avenue, which will then be demolished to create a grand entry and train hall facing Moynihan Train Hall across the street.

In 2023, Rep. Nadler, along with Mark Levine, Erik Bottcher and Tony Simone, all signers of this week’s letter, had urged Governor Hochul to consider the plan for a grand Eighth Avenue entry way, as well as Halmar’s proposal to use a public-private partnership to help finance and build a new station.

That is precisely the plan adopted by the Trump Administration after it took control of the project from the state-run MTA.

“The very same electeds who are now screaming ‘corruption’ were very supportive, at least in principle, of the ASTM/Halmar plan while Biden was president,” Noted Sam Turvey, a major advocate of an improved station. But at the time, Janno Lieber, head of the MTA, had said the cost of purchasing the theater, then said to be $450 million, was not a good use of public funds. Lieber even showed up at the press conference Nadler and the others held at the time to debate the point.

But in the letter to Secretary Duffy, the elected officials fiercely defended the MTA and demanded that it have a “full seat at the table.”

Andy Byford, Amtrak’s man in charge of the Penn renovation, had asked both NJ Transit and the MTA, to be partners in selecting the Master Developer. NJTransit accepted but the MTA said no, saying it preferred to rely on its long-term lease to defend its interests in the station project.

Penn Station is owned from street level down by Amtrak, which is wholly owned by the Federal Government. But the two largest users of the station are NJ Transit and the MTA’s Long Island Railroad. In another political irony, the plan to have developers of projects around Penn Station help pay for the improvement of Penn Station was originally proposed by the state, under Governor Andrew Cuomo. While that plan stalled, Governor Hochul has never withdrawn it. Vornado’s office tower was part of that plan.

Nevertheless, Nadler and his colleagues denounced the legislation empowering Amtrak to do something similar.

“This amendment was presented to Committee members as broad and harmless,” Nadler and the others wrote to Duffy. “It is neither. It is a sweeping transfer of power from local governments to a federally controlled entity operating in coordination with private real estate developers who have a direct financial stake in the outcome.”

The eight signers of the letter where: Representative Nadler; Comptroller Levine; Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal; State Senators Bottcher and Liz Krueger; Assembly members Simone and Micah Lasher; and council member Carl Wilson.

“We will use every oversight tool available to us—in Congress, in the state legislature, in city government, and in the courts if necessary—to ensure that this project is not used to bypass New York, undermine local authority, divert public transportation funds, or turn a critical public infrastructure project into a vehicle for private gain,” they wrote.

Secretary Duffy has said the federal government is prepared to spend $8-billlion for the transformation of Penn Station. But the eight elected officials demanded to know where that money would come from and expressed fear the federal government would take it from other local projects. They demanded, a “binding guarantee that no existing federal, state, or city transportation funding designated for other New York City or regional transit priorities will be diverted, delayed, redirected, or leveraged to finance the Penn Station redevelopment without the explicit advance consent of New York City and New York State.”