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Vornado Realty Trust is working on a $65 million streetscape project around Penn Station even as broader plans for transforming the neighborhood remain up in the air.
The project aims to make the area more hospitable to commuters by adding a new pedestrian plaza and rebuilding the sidewalks to be twice as wide as they are now. The plaza will span 16,000 square feet on West 33rd Street outside the station’s new East End Gateway and feature five October Glory maple trees, new seating and new restaurants. It should be ready to open in June.
The firm is adding 10 feet to the sidewalks along Seventh Avenue between West 31st and West 34th streets and replacing a half-mile of them with 4 acres of granite paver stones imported from Belgium. Vornado recently completed the first section of the expanded sidewalk, and the entire project should be done by the fall.
“Our vision is to welcome office workers, commuters, visitors and shoppers with wide granite sidewalks, expansive tree-lined plazas, new and accessible entrances to Penn Station, and storefronts activated by outstanding curated restaurants and retailers,” Vornado’s co-head of real estate, Barry Langer, said in a statement.
The real estate firm did not name potential restaurants and retailers in its statement.
Vornado has long dreamed of completely transforming the area around Penn Station, although higher interest rates and the persistence of hybrid work have added new challenges to the effort. The developer recently floated plans to turn the site of the neighborhood’s now-demolished Hotel Pennsylvania into space for tennis matches, Fashion Week events and a giant billboard, although this has drawn criticism for not including housing.
In 2021 Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled the latest plan for the neighborhood, which would still include a large amount of office space but also roughly 1,800 apartments. Hochul also said last year that she was “decoupling” renovations at Penn Station itself from the surrounding real estate project, although her administration and Vornado have both insisted that the broader plan for the neighborhood is still alive, despite its lack of a firm construction timeline.
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Eddie Small , 2024-04-30 17:52:22
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