We’re a no-go, Cuo!
Gov. Cuomo’s stealth plan to demolish six blocks around Penn Station and build 10 skyscrapers without a city review has hit a snag, with Albany Democrats trying to yank $1.3 billion earmarked for the project from the state budget.
Meanwhile, a group of lawmakers sent a letter to Cuomo Friday saying the plan for his Empire Station Complex — a massive, yearslong project in an area bounded by Sixth and Ninth avenues and 34th and 31st streets — should not go forward as proposed.
“We cannot have a plan for the area around Penn Station and not have a clear understanding, let alone agreement, on what happens to Penn Station,” read the letter signed by Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, Manhattan Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, Manhattan state Sens. Brad Hoylman and Robert Jackson, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
The letter follows local lawmaker Hoylman requesting two weeks ago — with the backing of state Sen. Liz Krueger, chair of the powerful Finance Committee — to pull the project’s funding from the 2022 legislative budget proposal.
The legislative pushback is giving new hope to condo owners near Penn Station who fear the Cuomo plan would vaporize their homes through eminent domain.
Omri Semadar, 47, a structural engineer on the condo board at Garden Terrace on Eighth Avenue between 30th and 31st streets, said he was horrified when he found out just recently about the plan.
“I’m worried that I’m going to be evicted from my apartment and my investment will go down the drain,” said Semadar, whose condo is worth about $650,000. “I was planning to live in this apartment indefinitely. It was my dream apartment . . . I feel I am a cockroach being stepped on.”
Semadar’s building is just one of more than 50 buildings in a oneblock radius of Penn Station that would be razed, according to the neighborhood-conditions study prepared by the Empire State Development Corp., the state agency running the project. If the project goes through, it won’t be just Garden Terrace. The Hotel Pennsylvania, Touro College and St. John the Baptist Church and its facilities for the homeless, among others, would be on the chopping block. Sen. Krueger was blunt. “Cuomo is trying to set this up so only his people have a say,” she said. “The concept the governor is trying to argue to get around [city approval] is that this is some sort of blighted, poverty-filled area. That’s ridiculous.”