October 28, 2004
New Penn Station to contain MSG?
New York's Farley Post Office, which local pols hope to spend $910 million (much of it in federal money) to turn into a new Penn Station, to replace the old Penn Station, which was torn down to make way for a new Madison Square Garden, which--
Let me start again.
Two of the four developers vying to turn the Farley Post Office into a new entryway to Penn Station have, for some reason, included a new sports arena to be built within the walls of the classic structure. That would be along with the skylit entry hall in the middle of the building, and the existing post office at the eastern end. (Most of the building was used for back-office operations, which relocated to a new facility several years ago.)
While the new arena would presumably serve as the new home of the Knicks and Rangers, the team's owner, Cablevision, says it plans to move ahead with its own $300 million renovation of the existing Madison Square Garden, which sits directly across 8th Avenue from the Farley building. So either this is a weird backdoor effort by the city to bribe Cablevision into backing off of its opposition to a new Jets stadium nearby (as the New York Times speculates, and the mayor's office denies), or Cablevision has something up its sleeve that no one is aware of ... or developers just really dig sports arenas. My money's on the latter.
