Seven to Save Spotlight: Penn Station Neighborhood
The Penn Station Neighborhood has been named one of this year’s Seven to Save. The proposed redevelopment of Penn Station and the surrounding area has been met with intense criticism since it was first put forward in 2020. Despite revisions, the Plan still presents major issues — most notably the human impact of displacing thousands of residents and business owners and the environmental impact of needlessly demolishing buildings that could be retrofitted and put back to active use. According to Empire State Development’s website, “The new neighborhood plan comes after several months of collaboration and more than 100 meetings with community stakeholders, government agencies, and elected officials to improve on past plans and establish a new way forward. The plan announced by Governor Hochul will also be subject to further public review and is part of a larger public process that remains ongoing.” The League is eager to join our colleagues in NYC to make sure preservation is at the forefront of that public process.
Threat: Development pressure; Demolition
This aerial view of Manhattan shows the Penn Station neighborhood highlighted in yellow.
“Multiple New York City blocks dense with historic buildings around Penn Station are at risk of indiscriminate mass demolition,” said Andrew Cronson, a representative of the Empire Station Coalition (ESC) affiliated with ESC member Save Chelsea. “From landmark structures by famed architects to more than 2,000 residents to huge reservoirs of embodied carbon…the needless losses caused by the proposed Penn Area Plan would be staggering.”
The iconic Gimbel’s Skybridge is just one historic feature of the Penn Station Neighborhood that will be lost if the Penn Area Plan moves forward as-is. Credit: Andrew Cronson
New York State's Empire State Development Corporation’s proposed Pennsylvania Station Civic and Land Use Project (the "Penn Area Plan") would demolish multiple blocks of historic buildings in the vicinity of Penn Station. All told, over 40 historic buildings and structures stand to be lost while displacing thousands of residents and businesses. The immediate impact on the people who live and work in this neighborhood would be devastating. The needless demolition is an environmental catastrophe. The negative environmental impact related to the embodied carbon that is wasted when buildings are demolished and put in a landfill, combined with the carbon output of major new construction projects, is in direct opposition to New York State’s proclaimed climate action goals.
ESC, a group of concerned community organizations led by co-coordinators Sam Turvey of RethinkNYC and Lynn Ellsworth of Human-Scale NYC, banded together in 2020 to fight the Penn Area Plan. ESC has worked tirelessly to push the Plan's many flaws to the forefront of public attention. The League will work with ESC and other local stakeholders to continue to prioritize the retention and adaptive reuse of historic buildings in the proposed redevelopment area in what has emerged as a highly contentious public debate over the future of urbanism in New York City.