Monday afternoon, a Metropolis Council committee votes on how lengthy to increase Madison Sq. Backyard’s “particular allow” to maintain working at its decades-long website above Penn Station; right here’s why that extension needs to be quick.
The MTA, NJ Transit and Amtrak this month raised a brand new alarm concerning the impossibility of evacuating the Backyard and the station in any main emergency: They demand main adjustments that would value MSG’s homeowners tons of of hundreds of thousands.
And the MTA has threatened to make use of eminent-domain legal guidelines to evict MSG “if essential.”
However the Dolan household, who management the Backyard, are fighters: Count on a authorized battle for the ages if the MTA goes down that street.
As it’s, the Dolans have requested the council to increase the “particular allow” eternally (which it received’t).
Plus, New Yorkers actually don’t wish to simply lose Manhattan’s solely main live performance venue and sports activities enviornment: The specter of shifting the Knicks out of city was sufficient for the Dolans to win a profitable tax exemption on the Backyard just a few a long time again.
Nor can the public afford to spend a dime on constructing a brand new MSG, as some “Transfer the Backyard” dreamers appear to imagine.
Heck, the nascent proposal for the MTA to purchase the Hulu Theater beneath MSG and construct a beyond-useless new Penn “grand entrance” on Eighth Avenue could be a stupider use of taxpayer funds than even the white-elephant “Oculus” PATH station downtown.
All this, because the multibillion-dollar deal Gov. Kathy Hochul inherited from Andrew Cuomo to remake the entire Penn space is completely useless (although she’s nonetheless pretending in any other case).
That (and the temporary-we-hope woes of the town’s commercial-real-estate market) has left builders (particularly Vornado) sitting on prime actual property within the space with no good use for it.
Yet another wild card: Mayor Eric Adams is lastly pushing to rezone the close by Garment District, whose woefully underused “manufacturing” areas might be prime residential ones.
We’d argue for simply leaving Penn and the Backyard as-is if that’s the case many different points didn’t confront the massive swath from Chelsea via Penn and into Herald Sq..
However far an excessive amount of is up within the air proper now for an extension even so long as the ten years the Metropolis Planning Fee steered.
A 3- or four-year one, with stipulations that the Dolans a minimum of settle the pressing evacuation difficulty, appears the wisest course.
That is additionally a possibility for Adams or Hochul to point out management with some grand cut price that satisfies all the stakeholders — maybe the (just-updated) imaginative and prescient from the Grand Penn Neighborhood Alliance, which sees a more-lucrative new MSG just like the Dolans’ Vegas Sphere between Herald Sq. and a Penn Station made beautiful and accessible.
Everybody will possible must accept far much less, however a brief allow renewal that leaves all choices open is the perfect hope to maneuver past the bickering.
