Yeah, sure. If this is what they think is the best idea, so be it.

Boston did a successful rebuild of North Station under the Garden. MSG should pay for this, but who knows.

???

That would be the 8th ave entrance with the garden remaining intact and not impacted. . The theater would need to be demolished which is still some long shot.

IMHO: anything that is purely aesthetic should be scraped. We need to be investing in expanding function, which this would do very little

This looks like a worse version of the Oculus.

Not a bench in sight

I went to catch a train upstate from Moynihan a few weekends ago for the first time...every single screen wasn't working. I am not joking every single screen wasn't updating for track numbers...so there was an employee walking around with a megaphone 🙃 Then every track entrance the employees had to move around the adjustable line ropes....which people jumped over and they had to yell about not cutting and going to the back of the line.

I just don't understand how trains have been around since the early 1800s and we seem to be getting worse at station design and upkeep

as long as they design a sad, dark corner next to NJTransit and put Tracks back I'll be happy

Shop till you drop.

It does look like a mall. And the no benches - very New York

New York specifically is getting worse. Great swaths of the rest of the world have their shit together. New York is where expensive failure is applauded as if it was world-changing success.

And not a single additional train.

For $10 billion.

While plutocrat assmunch James Dolan pays no taxes.

Im so sick of everything being turned into a mall.

I know it’s not the same but they did move across the street

Oh yeah, don’t forget about Kabooz!

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STOP MAKING EVERYTHING WHITE MARBLE FLOORS. They’re slippery as fuck in the best of times, but they turn deadly when wet. They chip and expand and are hard on people’s feet. All for an aesthetic that’s douche ugly anyway.

Once again NYC architects continue to push the obsession of soulless white architecture in a city that tracks dirt and grime everywhere. Floor will be permanently stained pretty quick just like WTC path platforms.

WTC oculus is the perfect example to be honest. Has no soul. No life. No personality. It’s bland, blinding white marble flooring, white walls, white roof, and white LED lights’ all meld together. The building’s purpose is to funnel you into luxury stores to spend money and take vapid photos for social media. Public transit entrances/exits conveniently hidden away by stairs as if some physiological ploy. No green space. No lounge space. Then just outside you have the beautiful memorial. The perfect juxtaposition of good design and crappy design.

Singapore Changi airport is what NYC architects design aspirations should be aimed towards for a transportation hub.

the exposure to fresh air and natural light really kills the vibe

That’s what I thought it was at first

When they get the de-icing salt tracked in there, it's like a soapy film, slippery as hell.

Mall

I’m so over this bullshit minimalist “Apple store” look

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I went to DC a few weeks ago and everything was working. Maybe something happened to the system for the couple hours you were go and now you're extrapolating a single anecdote to hate on the train system.

New York is the U.S. city that has trains

Not nearly enough people being shown in that proposal.

It's because the MTA is corrupt and we keep trying to figure out ways to give them more money and power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/nyregion/penn-station-hochul-nyc.html

Why does the post to penn Station have a ton of green trees

Not perfect, but I'll take it over the miserable dump we have now

edit: the city should be getting a lot more than this for a potentially $10 billion price tag, though. That's the kind of money that gets most cities several new subway lines, HSR stations, etc.

how to tell you do not have a person with a disability in your architectural firm

Sadly, it’s because that’s what developers will fund.

As is Amtrak.

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Thank you! I strongly echo your sentiment. The upgrades to Penn Station and more recently, the new expansion to Grand Central, are horrible.

Best we can do is 4 escalators and an environmental study

It literally is a mall, just one with trains. The only hint that’s this is a train station are the three small train track screens.

You literally provided an anecdote as if that negates their anecdote... 🤦‍♂️

To add more anecdotes, I've been to Moynihan roughly a dozen times, and probably 3 of those times the screens weren't working properly. I'd be curious to see data on how often the system breaks down. A shit ton of money went into this, we deserve better.

Look, as long as no tax $$$ is going into this and no tax exemption, I am , oh wait, who am I kidding?

Not at all the case. Architecture firms live and die by ADA guidelines. Those are hefty lawsuits if you design something not compliant. Fines can be in the millions. If there's nowhere to sit it's because the client, in this case the stakeholders on this project mandated it. Architects don't get to decide stuff like that.

They chose the wrong place for Oculus. They thought tourists would flood the mall because of The One, but it never happened. It is far as fuck, they wasted so much space inside, and left all the stores pretty much on the sides, but wtf? Wrong place for a mall; terrible interior design. The exterior taste is subjective. Would have been better if they did the interior better and put this mall elsewhere.

Won't the kiosks get in the way of the players??

Because architects are one of the most insular industries around. Rich people only want award winning prestigious architects because they have no taste themselves and just compete with other people from that class and architects are the ones that give each other the awards

It doesn't even get the aesthetics right. This is a boring, uninspired design that still lacks natural light.

Developers do things either because it's cheap or get them attention. Architects loving giving pats on the and awards for shot like this.

Looks pretty.

I've seen a LOT of these concept art renditions through the decades. Maybe I'm jaded, but I'll believe it when I see it actually happen.

Right now, the biggest problem is what the train station is meant for -- TRAIN SERVICE. We need more trains, we need more tunnels, we need more tracks, we need wider platforms, etc.

My 2 cents? I don't care if Penn Station looks like a soulless, utilitarian hellscape that's more artistically barren than a plain wall. As long as IT WORKS AS A TRAIN STATION. We can debate which open-air aesthetic we want to go with after we figure out the tough problems like capacity.

This train station was designed before the Wright Bros took to the sky, before the Model T reached popularity -- and it was intentionally overdesigned to anticipate 50+ years of expected growth. And then they tore the entire above-ground structure down around the time we sent mankind to the moon. And kept using the service for longer and longer -- so much that the "maximum" the original designers intended would be considered a slow day today.

We are at the maximum capacity the current system allows. We literally cannot fit more trains in the station. We literally cannot fit more trains in the tunnels. The trains themselves are bursting at the seams during rush hour. We have very real problems like tunnel degradation due to Sandy.

This concept art is just a fresh coat of paint. It adds nothing meaningful to solve the very real problems of the last 40-50 years of growth and deferred maintenance, let alone plannning for the next 40-50 years.

A mall that will be leased out to the same shitty repetition of retail you will find in the surrounding blocks. Sweetgreen, Starbucks, Chopt, Poke Bowl, a bank at each corner, H&M, Duane Reade, Chipotle, Shake Shack, CVS, and four or five wannabe French places selling overpriced baked goods.

Generic soulless design 🤮

You're saying this like Calatrava isn't absolutely brilliant. The dude's a terrible architect if you're on the paying end for any of his work but he is a pretty technically gifted architect and his work is undeniably unique and usually incredibly beautiful.

Not sure what axe you have to grind with architecture, but it reeks of the same attitude as "Modern art sucks" people.

Looks like a fucking Apple Store

Can we just actually fucking fix the train station part? All of this money should go to more platforms and more tunnels. Every cent spent on anything else is inexcusable.

If empty white liminal spaces out of scifi are your thing then sure he's your man. But more typical real spaces are full of clutter like benches and other signs of humans actually living there.

Just because something is white doesn't make it liminal or barren, blank white spaces can use their shape to give them character and personality, which Calatrava undeniably does. No one ever accused his work of having undistinctive shaping.

Someone get this guy out of the sub for having a completely rational take

Hooray, pointless renovations.

Tell me you missed the point of this post without telling me lol

I wouldn't call it pointless (given how heavily-used the station is), but we should be getting non-trivial regional rail upgrades along with station renovations for the same price tag.

That’s a solid rebuttal, and I agree with your station renovations suggestion 100%. There are several that are outright horrendous in both accessibility and appearance (2nd Avenue F line and Canal Street are the first two that come to mind).

Too many horrible stations to count in NYC. It's like the city and MTA have collectively forgotten that filthy, disgusting dungeons aren't a normal feature of urban transit networks

thats not the proposed new MSG. Thats the proposed new Penn Station.

Oh great....another rendering that'll never get built! Wake me up when they release the next one in about 2 years.

North Station is a glorified MNR platform, though. No Soul.

“Awwww Moe, the dank!”

To be honest, I don’t care about souls in train stations anymore. Want them spacious. If there’s natural light even better. And places to sit.

I mean, south station these days isn’t much better than north,,

The taxpayers of NY are overjoyed. /s

The character is empty like the modern American gilded soul. You can call it good. It just reminds me of rich people constructing their own cages of luxury.

Lol making sure the building meets ADA and life safety requirements is like 30% of a contemporary architect's job. I'm only kinda joking.....

The ADA details are often the first sheet on the drawing set after the title page, followed by egress path diagrams.

Moynihan train hall is bad for this too...

No benches allowed

It has seating but only for those with tickets. There's also a food court with seating

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but Grand Central's main hall doesn't have benches. Aren't train stations supposed to be places where people are in motion (going in or out), and not necessarily hanging around? I get waiting for a train, but there's lounges for that.

au bon pain for my wallet!

House the homeless

Yeah no. Architect here. ADA compliance is taken incredibly seriously. Oh, and it’s also the law. And it’s also a decent amount of what you get tested on for licensure. Seating availability though is not ADA regulated.

As NCreature mentioned, the lack of benches probably resulted from a conversation like this:

Architect: “we’re proposing seating along the main concourse” Client: “is it required? Is it ADA?” Architect: “No. Legally it’s not required and it’s not an ADA requirement, but as a major public space—“ Client: “Yeah no. Homeless people could sleep on them and scare away shoppers and ruin our image. We need those benches gone.”

remember what they took from us

I dont give a fuck just please stop making the subways smell like piss and have rat and meth heads everywhere and shit stains on every corner booth on the E train, stop spending millions on nothing projects like this

Lolol Plutocrat assmunch is the name of his cover band… which joking aside 100% exists

https://youtu.be/PszozSTwmb4

No new MSG unless they learn how to pay property taxes Fuck Dolan

The chip and expand wasn't on the marble. It was bad design by the architecture firm. At least if we're speaking the oculus

Lol who applauds new york?

The only people that think NYC works well are our elected officials and liberals who don't live here who are vested in nyc being a city on a hill to prove conservatives wrong.

Edit: ha, forgot the transplants who have to justify why they live with 3 other people in their 30s making the same amount of money they could have made back in ohio

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The oculus is an eye. It’s in its location because every year on 9/11 from 8:46am to 10:28am, the sun moves directly over the opening where the glass is and fills the oculus with light.

It’s a beautiful building, IMO. Most people I’ve met IRL seem to think so too but Reddit loves whining about it for some reason.

I have also been to Moynihan a dozen plus times and never seen the screens not work

Proposed Penn Station. MSG is upstairs.

Historically those main halls were nothing but benches for people waiting for trains to pull in / tracks to be announced. Including GCT

Pulling all the benches out (and designing for NO sitting space at all) is a fairly recent thing

It more than exists, he puts his band on the line up for bands like The Rolling Stones.

> every year on 9/11 from 8:46am to 10:28am, the sun moves directly over the opening where the glass is and fills the oculus with light

IDGAF

So many haters. This looks amazing and 1,000 times better than the sht hole today

For as long as I can remember going to Grand Central (30ish years) there have never been benches in the main hall. Only place to ever sit would be downstairs in the food area, or the restaurants upstairs.

Truth

I'm not sure about that. Here's that famous light picture

https://www.history.com/.amp/news/grand-central-terminal-facts

There's too many people coming and going to have benches in the way.

Just make sure to keep the McDonald’s

Aren't Calatrava buildings expensive to maintain as well?

I like the WTC station though. However, I like the original design that opened on nice days better.

The worst redesign was 1 WTC. The original accepted design looked great. The shard with garden levels at the top. What was built is one of the ugliest buildings in the skyline.

>Aren't train stations supposed to be places where people are in motion (going in or out), and not necessarily hanging around?

With the headways on some routes if you miss your train off peak it can be an hour or more until the next one.

>I get waiting for a train, but there's lounges for that.

Penn Station has a lounge for Amtrak customers not for NJ Transit and LIRR riders.

What did second avenue do to you?

$7 billion to $10 billion was the cost of the plan that would involve removing all of MSG and also tearing down and redeveloping the whole area around the station. The developer, Vornado, that would redevelop around the station is backing out of that plan because the demand for office space is lower post-pandemic.

This image is from a new proposal that just removes the theater. They haven't announced the cost of this plan yet.

That will not stop the homeless from sleeping where ever they want. Certainly hasn't stopped them now.

The real reason for the location is the Port Authority owns the land and used post 9/11 support to build a very expensive underground mall under the guise of rebuilding a PATH station that was destroyed on 9/11.

I am from New Jersey and I have used NYPS to commute from upstate (where I went to university) and from Brooklyn (where I now live) since 2009, commuting for work to Long Island. NYPS has tons of issues, it's terrible, gross, ugly, disorganized, the tunnels need extensive rehabilitation. BUT! I have never seen the track screens not working.

My main gripe with Moynihan is that it was such an expensive and exhaustive project (even the PM architect killed himself during construction) is that it has an EXTENSIVE screen display. There are screens literally on every column and surface...and not one could show the track. But best believe the blinding red Verizon sign was working.

I have a lot of issues with the architecture and infrastructure in the city. And the majority isn't asking what will make commuting easier...but what will make it flashy.

>uninspired design that still lacks natural light.

If you want more natural light than this then the city needs to eminent domain all of MSG for a lot of money.

Redeveloping any thing above the platforms is basically Oculus part 2.

It will be called a transit project but have nothing to do with operating trains. Instead the funding will go towards creating a fancy mall above the platforms.

This plan might actual be better than the $7 billion one the Governor and Mayor were pushing for because this would create a smaller fancy mall so it should be cheaper. Cost hasn't been announced yet though

A big question is whether this smaller redevelopment plan also creates new dead end platforms for NJ transit that would make future through running more expensive to implement?

Now that Vornado no longer wants to redevelop the area everyone might be ready to admit that NJ transit doesn't need 6 new platforms south of the existing station. That was just an excuse to demolish the block south of the station and give it to Vornado.

Hmmmm. City land already, isn't it? What happens if they just don't renew the lease?

In the area surrounding Penn they were going to use eminent domain on a bunch of properties for the disgusting Vornado scheme.

Oculus Interior 2, revenge of the floor tiles

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/waiting-room-grand-central-terminal-new-york-city-new-york-news-photo/929234384

GCT is so big that it had adjoining rooms for benches that were nearly as big as the main hall.

The old Penn Station was the same. It had numerous large rooms; one of them was a waiting hall that was not photographed as much as the entrance and concourse rooms.

In other stations and terminals, such as 30th Street Philadelphia and Hoboken, there are many benches in the main halls.

I think 'Penn south' is considered part of the gateway project, whereas this is just an overhaul of the existing station above the tracks

Good example of the older waiting area style is Hoboken Terminal.

>What happens if they just don't renew the lease?

It's not a lease that the city can decide whether to renew or not. It's an operating permit so even if not renewed the city needs to eminent domain the arena to tear it down.

>But MSG is hardly down for the count. That’s because uprooting the Garden isn’t as simple as yanking the permit. For starters, say real estate lawyers, the arena’s owners — a company controlled by the Dolan family, which also owns the Knicks and Rangers teams — would be due a financial payout.

...

>If the permit expires, the games and shows could go on — but without much of an audience. The special permit, which expires July 24, allows the Garden to hold more than 2,500 spectators. However, the city would likely allow the Garden to continue operations without interruption while the venue goes through the review process.

...

>Michael Rikon, an attorney whose law firm focuses on eminent domain — cases in which government takes or restricts private property — says said he agreed with MSG’s claim that it’s being singled out, given that MSG owns the property and has successfully operated it.

>If the city denied the MSG permit, Rikon said, “Just compensation would be required. Because if they do not grant the special permit, the property becomes worthless. It can’t be used for its highest and best use.”

>In 2021, the Empire State Development authority estimated that moving the Garden would cost the public $8.6 billion, including $5 billion to build a new arena.

$5 billion to build a new arena seems high since Barclays was built for $1 billion, but whatever the exact amount it would be expensive.

The hostility in all the recent designs is palpable

Fair, but the rendering pic only shows one room. Additionally, id think that train travel has changed quite a bit in the last 60 years. It uses to be the way one got to different cities, now Penn is mostly serving commuters. Amtrak does have a sitting area.

Amtrak's sitting area is distant from where they ask you to line up for the trains, which starts more than an hour before departure (like airport gate lice). It means you are forced to stand or forced to take really unhappy seat choices on the trains.

Airport gates have seating areas!

The problem is, it's now policy to not have benches in transportation facilities. They do not want to have to move homeless people off of them, because there are now tens of thousands of documented homeless people in the city every night & the shelters are terribly unsafe and overcrowded. So they've removed or altered benches in the subways, they close parks, they've taken benches off the sidewalks, and now they build new train stations (notably Moynihan and WTC) that have nowhere to sit at all, except for the tiny disconnected far-from-platforms Amtrak waiting area you mentioned.

People are mentioning it because sometimes they WOULD like to sit, and commuters are sometimes waiting 1-2 hours for their next train when it's off-peak service. (e.g. the weekend trains on Metro North past Croton and White Plains are hourly, and some destinations have even less frequent service) And these people tend to have luggage and don't want to arrive early and stand around with it. This isn't a bizarre hypothetical.

The MTA doesn’t have anything to do with Moynihan though.

Thank you for answering my questions with additional information. I was downvoted just for asking for clarity, because....reddit.

I propose we get Dolan TF out.

Put it 16miles under concrete and we have a deal

You know why there are no benches.

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For a city that was once considered a central creative hub - it's so disappointing to see mocks like that reflect the dullest designs. Why can't we take some risks here? I understand there are structural considerations, but certainly, we can do better than this...

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Sounds like this will be a hot take, but I really like the Oculus.

I remember visiting the city for the second time around 2017 and not knowing the Oculus existed. I was in Brookfield Place and randomly took that long underground tunnel that leads into the Oculus. I remember being stunned, thinking that only in a city like New York could such a striking place not even be that well known.

Yes because it's a mass transit station - not a homeless shelter

Exactly! People act like they don’t know how it goes in this city…

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Believe me, I have plenty of empathy for the unhoused but I think public transit systems should be kept clean and well maintained. That said, we need to collectively work on finding solutions for the less fortunate.

I live in the neighborhood and no one wants this or needs it. We would love to see MSG go elsewhere if they need more room for commuters, which they do not.

>The demolition of the Theater at MSG would free up substantial room for the train hub below, which is crowded with structural columns that disrupt the passage of commuters, said Elizabeth Goldstein, the president of the Municipal Art Society, a nonprofit preservation group that was briefed on the plans. The group supported a similar overhaul of the train station in 2014.

>But it would not solve all of the station’s problems, Ms. Goldstein said. The plan doesn’t add train capacity, nor does it address congestion issues on the Seventh Avenue side of the station, where pedestrians exit the subway, she said. Historically, most passengers have entered the station from the east, not the west, though redevelopment of Manhattan’s Far West Side may alter that.

Everyone talks about whether the arena should move but why not just get rid of two Penn Plaza? The office building takes up about a quarter of the block above the station. It's easier to put a value on the cost of buying an office building than the cost of buying the only large arena in Manhattan.

When Vornado wanted the land the governor and mayor supported spending somewhere between $7 billion and $10 billion to eminent domain entire blocks to work around both the MSG arena and 2 Penn Plaza.

If this proposal that can create some light and space on the 8th avenue side by tearing down the theater is not enough and light/space is also ended on the 7th avenue side then just tear down the single building that is on top of the 7th avenue side.

>now Penn is mostly serving commuters.

Go to Penn Station at about 9 pm tonight and you'll see those some of those commuters sitting on the floors as they wait almost an hour for the next train on their line.

Tranq addicts and dope heads prefer to stand and slump over all wobbly these days.

Reddit whines about everything. Doubly so in this sub.

The ticketed seating area shuts down after the last Amtrak departure of the night, which is currently around 9 PM. LIRR of course is 24/7, so if you go to a game at MSG you have to stand around until your train instead of sitting in a waiting room like a civilized human.

theres a lounge at moynihan

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> Penn station[/Moynihan] has a lounge for Amtrak customers not for NJ Transit and LIRR riders.

I don’t think it was personal but one time there was a fully formed human poop on a column near the south exit for months

Too sterile of a color theme. No soul compared to existing MSG.

> Aren't train stations supposed to be places where people are in motion (going in or out), and not necessarily hanging around?

With this logic, airports shouldnt have seats either.

30th street in Phillys main hall is still full of benches…surprisingly not filled with homeless either.