In some ways, the challenge mirrored Mr. Cuomo’s different efforts to place his imprint on the town, together with the renovation of the Moynihan Prepare Corridor throughout the road from Penn Station and his reconstruction of the town’s main airports in Queens.
On this case, the funds from the event would pay for beauty enhancements at Penn Station, in addition to a possible growth of the station a block south of its present location. New tracks and platforms would add rail capability alongside the economically important hall connecting commuters in New Jersey to jobs in New York, after a second tunnel is constructed beneath the Hudson River.
The state would wield its authority to overrule native zoning and planning legal guidelines in order that builders may construct greater buildings on the website than in any other case allowed. When Ms. Hochul succeeded Mr. Cuomo, she continued the state’s help for the challenge whereas making modest modifications to appease critics, corresponding to increasing pedestrian pathways and barely decreasing the challenge’s proposed scale.
The report additionally highlights a key concern from critics: It might largely profit a single firm, Vornado Realty Belief, one of many metropolis’s largest workplace builders. Vornado owns 4 websites within the growth zone and a part of a fifth, and its chief govt, Steven Roth, final yr donated the utmost, $69,700, to Ms. Hochul’s marketing campaign.
Mr. Roth, alongside together with his relations, additionally gave Mr. Cuomo about $400,000 in marketing campaign donations earlier than he resigned. State officers and a Vornado spokesman have mentioned the donations didn’t affect Vornado’s position within the enterprise. Mr. Roth has known as the redevelopment of the Penn Station space Vornado’s “Promised Land.”
In an earnings name this week, Mr. Roth reiterated the corporate’s dedication to the state’s challenge. “Clearly, we help it,” he mentioned.
A Vornado spokesman declined to touch upon the document on the report.
Regardless of the state’s multiyear work on the challenge and its imminent approval, the Unbiased Finances Workplace discovered that the plan lacked a strong evaluation of the quite a few dangers, together with the implications of the shift to distant work and whether or not the brand new Penn Station towers may negatively affect Hudson Yards, the big growth on the far West Aspect of Manhattan. Hudson Yards opened in 2019 and has a equally structured tax deal because the proposed Penn Station website.