The City Council approved a five-year extension to Madison Square Garden’s permit on Thursday, which allows the venue to operate above Penn Station.
It’s shortest license ever given to the venue — and is a signal that lawmakers are questioning whether it should remain atop the country’s busiest transit hub. The renewal comes as the MTA is moving ahead with plans to redesign Penn Station.
“We’re setting a clock that will help bring all the stakeholders to the table to fix Penn Station now,” Councilmember Erik Bottcher said at Thursday’s Council vote.
The Department of City Planning had recommended a 10-year permit extension for the Garden — but the City Council’s zoning committee last month cut its length in half. The committee also slashed a recommendation to mandate public space upgrades to the neighborhood around the venue.
The Council’s vote on Thursday calls on MSG to come up with a “traffic management plan” that helps reduce truck traffic in the neighborhood.
“The five-year ‘clean’ permit is still too generous a deal for MSG and its owner, James Dolan,” said Rachael Fauss, senior policy analyst with the nonprofit good government group Reinvent Albany. “The Council’s weak agreement fails to require MSG to cooperate with the MTA’s reasonable requests for space for Penn Station upgrades, leaving transit riders in the lurch.”
The fabled arena opened in 1963 with a 50-year permit to operate. The City Council issued a new 10-year permit in 2013, which expires this year.
Federal, state and local elected officials held a rally on Tuesday across from the Theater at Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue, where they called for speedier renovations to Penn Station. The group advocated for improvements to the station’s west side, which may require the theater’s demolition.
“It’s so important that when we rehabilitate Penn Station, that we don’t just focus on ingress and egress and functionality and, you know, the mid-block train hall is going to be grand, but we also want Eighth Avenue to be a grand public space because this needs to be,” Levine said at the event. “A public space that is not just tolerated by New Yorkers, but a space that is beloved by New Yorkers, like Grand Central Station.”
MTA Chair Janno Lieber, who was not scheduled to appear, crashed the event but declined to endorse Levine’s suggestion. Lieber has previously said he does not want to tear down the theater, because it would entail paying Dolan millions of dollars.
But a Penn Station plan backed by Lieber’s predecessor Pat Foye is gaining steam. The firm ASTM has hired Foye and is pitching a concept that would improve the public spaces around the Garden. The plan would tear down the theater and replace it with a grand new Penn Station entrance on Eighth Avenue.
Bottcher and Assemblymember Anthony Simone both appeared at Tuesday’s rally along with Levine, and said they support removing the theater.
Records show ASTM spent $20,000 in July and August on lobbyists to push for the firm’s Penn Station plan. Levine, Bottcher and Simone are all listed as targets of the group’s lobbying effort, according to public filings.
The MTA is still finalizing its own designs for a new Penn Station — but the process is already off to a rough start. The agency held its first meeting on the new designs in July, but didn’t invite a key partner: Amtrak, which owns the station.
“We’re going to get there. Let the games begin,” Lieber said this week.
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