MTA ‘MAN CAVE’
Lair found behind wall under GCT
Three MTA tradesmen allegedly boozed, napped and watched TV inside a secret “man cave” built below the tracks at Grand Central Terminal, according to the transit agency’s internal watchdog.
Investigators discovered the lounge — complete with a futon, a flat-screen TV, microwave and refrigerator — behind a Sheetrock wall in an unused locksmith shop below Track 114, on the station’s lower level, according to a report by MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny.
The three Metro-North employees — a wireman, a carpenter foreman and an electrical foreman who were not named due to ongoing disciplinary proceedings — denied ever having been in the room.
But Pokorny’s office says they left their fingerprints behind.
Investigators initially paid a surprise visit to the locksmith shop on Aug. 8, 2019, after concluding that Metro-North officials had failed to probe two previous complaints about workers using the space to “hang out and get drunk and party.”
There, they found wooden cabinets that appeared to be specifically designed to conceal the TV and futon, along with a pullout cot sitting just outside the room. A half-empty beer sat in the fridge.
An Amazon streaming device attached to the TV had the carpenter foreman’s mobile hot spot on its list of available Wi-Fi networks, and was registered to the man — whose name was also on a pull-up bar box and two 2018 datebooks found in the room.
A receipt with the wireman’s name printed on it was found inside an air-mattress box in the room, the IG said.
When confronted, the electrical foreman admitted to having a copy of the key to the shop despite not having worked with locksmiths for at least five years.
“Many a New Yorker has fantasized about kicking back with a cold beer in a prime piece of Manhattan real estate — especially one this close to good transportation,” Pokorny said. “Few would have the chutzpah to commandeer a secret room beneath Grand Central Terminal.”
In a statement, railroad President Cathy Rinaldi called the secret man cave “outrageously inappropriate” and “not consistent with Metro-North’s values.”
All three men — who still deny the allegations — have been suspended without pay, and face potential termination.