IS IT THE END OF THE LINE FOR US?
Biz owners fear they’ll be razed by Penn plan
Business owners around Penn Station are racked with worry over Gov. Hochul’s plan to seize and raze properties in the area to make way for 10 new skyscrapers.
The state’s Empire State Development Corp. is expected to vote in the coming weeks to approve the plan, which officials concede will displace 473 businesses and 128 households.
Backed by Mayor Adams, the plan would use tax revenues from the new office towers to fund aesthetic renovations at Penn Station, the nation’s largest transit hub.
Local merchants, who have heard only rumblings about the plans, told The Post that they were concerned about what could be in store for their neighborhood.
“This pub is my livelihood and my life basically,” said Angela Reilly, owner of Molly Wee Pub at Eighth Avenue and West 30th Street.
Reilly, 68, who opened the bar with her late husband more than 40 years ago, first heard whispers about plans to bulldoze her block a year ago. But she has not been notified of the fate of a building she owns, which houses the pub and seven residential tenants who live above.
“They need to renovate Penn Station, but they don’t need to take away the whole block,” she said.
Hochul inherited the effort from exGov. Andrew Cuomo. In November, she said the state had reduced the planned towers’ size by 7% but did not walk back Cuomo’s plan to sidestep the city’s zoning process to seize and destroy privately owned buildings.
Neighborhood groups have accused Hochul of diverting billions of dollars in tax revenue that will now instead line the pockets of property developer Vornado Realty Trust. Vornado CEO Steven Roth and his family have given tens of thousands of dollars to her re-election campaign.
“There should be enough room to have the best of old and new. They just don’t want to hear that,” said Samuel Turvey, an architect who leads a group fighting the project.
Turvey’s group, ReThink Penn Station, predicts that 6,000 residences and 2,000 businesses will be impacted by the state’s plan — much higher than the state’s estimates.
History at risk
Historic structures that would be demolished under the plan include the Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue, the Gimbel’s Skybridge over 32nd Street and a church that is home to several Franciscan friars.
Steve Marshall, 71, fears New York will lose a piece of music history if his recording studio, where a thenunknown Madonna laid down tracks, were destroyed. The studio used to be one of 100 on West 30th Street.
“Almost every major musician in New York has either lived, rehearsed or recorded on West 30th Street,” the rocker said.
Up the street, at 307 W. 30th St., is a brownstone from 1876 that stores the genealogy records for more than 100,000 Lithuanians who moved to the US from 1886 to 2012.
The nonprofit Lithuanian Alliance of America has occupied the brownstone for 112 years. It was the first port of call for new Lithuanian immigrants before they boarded trains at Penn Station for coal mines in Pennsylvania, steel mills in Pittsburgh or stock yards in Chicago.
“If we lost this building, we would lose our history,” said board member Antanas “Tony” Dambriunas. “More than 100 years of our history and culture would be gone. Generations of memories would be gone.”
Meanwhile, the owners of Tracks sports bar — who had moved the pub across the street from Penn Station after being turfed out of their longtime spot inside the hub in 2019 — say they will not be able to start over for a third time if they are kicked out by the state’s plan.
“After COVID, and with the economy like it is, we could not afford to open a third place,” co-owner Michael O’Brien said.
“It’s been a long road, and it is all very uncertain, which is frustrating.”
Empire State Development spokesman Matthew Gorton said the plan that has been set for a vote next month by the public-benefit firm does not entail any property seizure, explaining that those properties not already owned by the developers will be dealt with separately by the authority that gets tasked with expanding Penn Station southward.
“Whichever railroad entity is responsible for displacement, should it come to that, will need to provide relocation assistance in strict compliance with applicable laws and procedures,” Gorton said.
The properties already owned by Vornado contain about 150 businesses that will shutter when the developer builds its skyscrapers.