The Penn Station redevelopment saga, recently quiet but never dormant, has taken an abrupt plot twist, as proposals emerge and re-emerge against a background of renewed attention toand a high-level edict requiringclassical design. General Project Plan: Update or Scrap?On March 6, Assemblyman Tony Simone (with support from City Councilman Erik Bottcher, Borough President Mark Levine, and State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal) called for amending the General Project Plan (GPP) to replace the ten Vornado Realty commercial towers proposed in former governor Andrew Cuomos initial GPP with a mixed-use complex comprising one-third housing and two-thirds offices.Simones proposal would rely on a new GPP that would still override local zoning to facilitate construction but reject two controversial aspects: the option of seizing private property through eminent domain; and the demolition of Block 780, bordered by 30th and 31st Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, to replace residences, businesses, and St. John the Baptist Catholic Church with a proposed southern expansion of the station. Simones GPP proposal calls for about 5,000 housing units (up from the existing GPPs 1,800) plus a public park on the Seventh Avenue site of the newly demolished Hotel Pennsylvania.The existing GPP, predicated on financing a new Penn Station with tax revenue from the towers, has been decoupled from the station renovations since Governor Kathy Hochuls announcement in June 2023, as the weak commercial real estate market made that revenue stream unlikely. For community activists, preservationists, and proponents of alternative plans, the GPP remains a punching bag, yet the Governor has not withdrawn it outright. Her stated openness to proposals by any architect, any design firm, any engineer has not taken the form of an RFP. Work on the redesign has been the province of a selected 55-member Station Working Advisory Group (SWAG) since September 2024.Washburns plan is one of several that would restore McKim, Mead, and Whites original Beaux Arts entrance arcade and colonnades, features that were destroyed when the original station was demolished in 1963. (Courtesy Grand Penn Community Alliance)The Pitch from the Grand Penn Community AllianceA few days after Simones announcement, another proposal seized the spotlight. At a March 11 press conference at The New York Historical Society, Grand Penn Community Alliance (GPCA) executive director Alexandros Washburn presented details, from financial charts to virtual-reality simulations, and announced that the GPCA would soon submit documents to the U.S. Department of Transportation.The GPCAs plan is not a new vision but instead the latest iteration of a verdant neoBeaux-Arts design that Washburn presented at Cooper Union in January 2023. Today it benefits from support from Thomas D. Klingenstein, the Claremont Institute chairman and financier of right-wing causes who donated $10 million to Republican campaigns during the 2024 election. The scheme by Washburn differs from the two leading proposalsthe Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)s plan and the public-private partnership (P3) of ASTM-Halmar, HOK, and PAUby requiring that Madison Square Garden (MSG) find a new site. Where the Garden now stands, Grand Penn proposes a park roughly the size of Bryant Park. The ASTM-Halmar/HOK/PAU P3s plan can accommodate a future Garden move but does not require it. The MTAs design leaves MSG in place.A fourth scheme by Richard Camerons Beaux-Arts Atelier, supported by ReThinkNYC and known as the McKim Variations, offers three versions contingent on the Garden moving, both the Garden and 2PENN (Two Penn Plaza) moving, or both remaining in place, with the Garden redesigned to harmonize with his station that evokes the original structure, designed by McKim, Mead and White.A single train concourse is central to the the Grand Penn plan, which would allow for the implementation of through-running trains and greater programmatic flexibility. (Courtesy Grand Penn Community Alliance)Washburn was previously the chief urban designer for the City and public works advisor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He recently told AN that part of the method of Grand Penn is to give big wins to all the stakeholders. Recalling his contention, writing in Metropolis in 2007 (while serving in the Bloomberg administration), that nature is the new civic ideal, he noted that Grand Penn provides ample green space for the West Side, which is undersupplied with parks. Further community benefits include sparing certain landmarks that we would love to carry forward into our future, the Church of St. John in particular, though the plan sacrifices part of Block 780 for a southern station expansion.For the railroads, Grand Penn offers doubled capacity with the creation of a 604,000-square-foot train concourse: The most important aspect of rail operations to be supported by the station is flexibility. We give flexibility through that enormous, open single train concourse to reprogram trains as through-running or as commuter or as intercity or as regional rail.As for MSG, GPCA proposes a new arena across Seventh Avenue. Washburn is unfazed by MSG Entertainment president James Dolans well-known opposition to relocating the Garden. It has to be a business deal that appeals to them, he said. Mr. Dolan is a very good businessman; hes actually even a visionary, when you look at the Sphere and other projects hes done. At the vacant Hotel Pennsylvania site and adjoining property extending to the intersection of 34th Street and Seventh Avenue, a new Garden would retain essential transit access. The savings from building a new station without the Garden above are substantial, considering gains in speed, safety, and simplified logistics. The cost of the new MSG, including land, is estimated at $3.5 billion and is included in the overall $7.5 billion estimate, a figure that matches the MTA plans figures. As for Vornado, they would gain both from the land purchase for the arena and the rising value of their other local properties.Weve developed a set of measured drawings, cost-estimated them, and they are now a reasonable alternative set, Washburn explained. We are submitting those to US DOT, and they perform to certain standards. For instance, we have 3.1 times the number of entries that the current station does. We have 1.99 times the amount of square footage on the platform. Critically, particularly for observers concerned with the ventilation, circulation, and safety problems raised in the June 2023 MSG-Penn Station Compatibility Report, GPCAs plan has 10 times the emergency ventilation.Washburn contends that the GPCAs plan reframes the Penn conundrum to reduce stakeholder conflicts and give the city an infrastructural asset that can last at least a century. Were the only plan that states the problem correctly, which is how to get the best train station, Washburn said. The answer, he thinks, requires a new arena and an opening to above.Some opponents argue that the Grand Penn plan prioritizes architectural aesthetics over much-needed improvements to transit infrastructure. (Courtesy Grand Penn Community Alliance)Reanimating Public DebateWhen approached for comment on the Simone and Grand Penn plans, the MTA press office referred AN to MTA CEO Janno Liebers remarks at a March 11 press conference, emphasizing what actually has been done to make Penn Station better (e.g., the upgraded 33rd Street concourse) rather than longer-range plans. We are, as a transportation agency, focused [on] what we can do now. Our focus is doing things that can deliver for customers now, without tearing up Penn Station and making it unlivable for another generation.Critiquing the MTAs current plan on multiple grounds, from its reliance on a flawed 2021 technical review to its cost estimates (recently adjusted to account for miscalculated HVAC expenses), Sam Turvey, chairperson of ReThinkNYC, said, Governor Hochul should sponsor the design competition for Penn Station which she promised in June of 2023 once the transit options are fairly evaluated and a track plan determined. He links the current logjam to interagency turf battles and calls for Amtrak management to make everybody in New Jersey Transit, the MTA, and Amtrak check their egos at the door and specifically for MTA management to understand that New York deserves better. Transportation engineer Robert Paaswell, director emeritus of CUNYs University Transportation Research Center, also prefers placing the transit horse before the architectural cart, questioning whether a GPP (commercial or mixed), Grand Penn, or any development plan can avoid worsening congestion if it proceeds without first bringing the MTA up to a state of good repair and operations. For a station in the epicenter of what should be a rebirth of American rail, including a future for high-speed rail, he said, unless you put what the future of rail is in there its hard to do any planning.Paaswell contrasted his work on the Port Authority redesign jury with the current Penn arrangement: SWAG isnt a working group. Its a bunch of people sitting in a room nodding at presentations that are made. The eight or ten people that we had on the Port Authority were a real working group, because we were given the plans, and we each had to go around the table and hammer them out, hour after hour, rather than just listening and then saying, Oh, this is good. Well vote on alternative A or alternative B. His recommendations for Penn include an independent competition; vetting of city, state, and Regional Plan Association numbers by population experts and economic forecasters; an openness to outside investors (whether in P3 form or not); and everybody sacrificing a little bit of their own authority to get a much higher buy-in.The Grand Penn proposal is one of several that has advocated for relocating Madison Square Garden. (Courtesy Grand Penn Community Alliance)Horse, Meet Cartand Watch for the ElephantPAUs Vishaan Chakrabarti supports Simones amendments for more housing and more sensitivity to historic fabric while favoring a basic reordering of priorities. The GPP puts the cart before the horse, he said, in the sense that, whether its office or residential, its still primarily talking about transit-oriented density without talking about how to fix the transit. Youve got to start with the infrastructure and then figure out what is the right form of development around it. Noting that operational questions about through-running service, as seen in Londons Elizabeth Line and other systems, are separate from architectural questions, he pointed out that our plan can work with the existing train shed, and it can work with a reconfigured track layout that provides through-running.As for Grand Penn, he is skeptical. Moving the Garden, an idea he has advocated in past proposals, strikes him as no longer achievable. We have not had a governor since Eliot Spitzer who was interested in moving the Garden, he said, recalling the history of efforts to find an alternate double-block site near transit, including his own past proposal for the two blocks south of Macys. It would be lovely to move Madison Square Garden, but the government doesnt want to pay to do it, and the Garden has no interest in doing it.Contrasting the visuals prepared by other teams with the ASTM-Halmar/HOK/PAU P3s extensive structural and mechanical drawings and actual financial backing, he views the MTA plan and his own teams as the only serious contenders. I dont understand why replacing an underground station with an arena on top of it with an underground station with a park on top of it is better, he said. He also offered some stylistic feedback: The neoclassical design seems like a naked appeal to the President. Like, come on, go full-on Albert Speer. If youre going to do it, do it.Backed by right-wing financier Thomas D. Klingenstein, the GPCA plan aligns with the Trump administrations promotion of classical architecture. (Courtesy Grand Penn Community Alliance)Here, Chakrabarti has identified the living-room elephant that some Penn observers, and even active participants, are reluctant to name. The various proposals reflect a widely shared belief that Penn Station is long overdue for an overhaul, yet any suggestion that the current political regime could be appropriate agents for its replacement is certain to be divisive. GPCA has support from the National Civic Art Society (NCAS), whose board includes Klingenstein. The NCAS is one of the few arts organizations to support the White Houses 2020 and 2025 executive orders mandating classical architecture in federal buildings, opposed vigorously by the AIA and recently likened to 20th-century dictators anti-modernist paranoia by Steven Holl in Dezeen. Chakrabarti pointed out that the newer order is much shorter and less stylistically prescriptive, as it requires federal buildings to respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage. Still, even a transient convergence of interests between urban design advocates and the Trump administration is a salient case of politics creating strange bedfellows.Public Review or Back-Room Deal?On March 19, Governor Hochul spoke of revising Penn plans to avoid destroying a neighborhood, encouraging preservationists by specifically stating opposition to Amtraks intentions for a southern expansion that would demolish Block 780. To date, however, she has not announced a public design competition that would follow through on her 2023 comments, while calls for an independent review of transit fundamentals await official answers. Hochuls ongoing conversations with the President have given rise to the suggestion that improving Penn Station may be one area where their interests could convergeand, with the Department of Transportations deadline for ending congestion pricing now postponed by a month, wide-ranging speculation about the potential tradeoffs, far removed from Penn Station, that could be involved.Bill Millard is a regular contributor to AN.