According to a report in the New York Times, developers planning to rebuild Pennsylvania Station and redevelop the surrounding neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side are trying to lure Macy’s from its 105-year-old landmark building in Herald Square to a glass-enclosed mall that would sit inside the new train station.
The Times reported that the developers — Stephen M. Ross of The Related Cos. Inc. (New York) and Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust (New York) — are in the early stage of negotiations with the department store.
The Times said “it seems unlikely that Macy’s would abandon the landmark building, despite its age and inefficiencies.” Macy’s and the developers declined to comment.
The $14 billion proposal, which would also require Madison Square Garden to move a block away, would demolish the old Garden and replace it with a new Penn Station with 1.1 million square feet of shops and department stores. The developers would build a ring of office towers totaling more than 6 million square feet of space — the equivalent of three Empire State Buildings — around the new train station, transforming an aging neighborhood into a new commercial district. At the same time, an adjunct transportation station would be created at the Farley Post Office, across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station.
The Times said the current design for the new Garden would take up about two-thirds of the Farley building and rise about 30 feet above the roof line. Preservationists have objected to the Garden’s plans to install ticket vendors at the historic stamp windows and to replace an interior brick wall with one of glass, which would allow commuters to view the interior of the basketball court.
There would be station entrances on both Seventh and Eighth Avenues and vast public halls larger than those at Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s East Side. The big retail spaces would be concentrated on the station’s north and south sides.