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>The congested, chaotic section of Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station, which teems with tourists, commuters and shoppers, is undeniably drab. Does that make it blighted?

>New York State has decreed that it is, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently likened the Penn Station area to “a Skid Row neighborhood.” She was defending the controversial plan to allow developers to build 10 towers around the decrepit train station — the busiest transit hub in the nation — in exchange for some of the $7 billion the state needs to renovate it.

>If New York State officials deem an urban area to be “blighted,” blocks can be bulldozed and people and businesses can be forced to relocate. And new towers — unbound by limits on size and height as defined by the city’s normal planning rules — can rise.

>The state’s authority to make such a determination and move forward with redevelopment is nearly impossible to contest.

>Its ability to intervene was meant to ensure that neglected areas do not languish. But critics say that officials have long abused the power to pry private properties away from their owners, and they accuse Ms. Hochul of continuing the practice with the Penn Station redevelopment project.

You can call Penn Station area a lot of things, but anyone who thinks that area is actually "blighted" is writing that from Ohio.

I don't know what they mean by blighted but I do know that if I'm exiting Penn Station I try to get myself out of that press of bodies, fast food dumps, guys selling crap from a table and cheap suitcases vomiting out of narrow stores before someone tells me I'm looking at them the wrong way or a taxi hits me.

Yeah blighted seems harsh but compare it to the newly updated area around grand central and it looks pretty bad in comparison.

I'm just not a believer that a street that looks like a cacophony of filth has much that's sacrosanct. If people have great memories of eating hot dogs on a corner, then they'll have those memories forever.

It is blighted though.

It might be worth reading the article, because redeveloping the area will fix none of the problems you describe, which are mostly congestion and "fast food dumps".

"Blighted" here has to do with the quality of the buildings, and per the article, less than 30% of the buildings here qualify. Otherwise, people live and work in those buildings, and one of the biggest reasons for redevelopment is to extract higher rents from the neighborhood. But redevelopment won't do anything about street vendors or the "press of bodies"

Because we need more high rise office towers. /s

Yeah it’s a grift to kick the small businesses out and get the state to pay for some of the demo and construction.

I had a homeless guy follow me from the Port Authority to Penn Station while yelling racial slurs at me and throwing garbage bags into the street. Does that make it blighted? I think so. Will building 10 skyscrapers there fix anything? Probably not.

It’s likely going to be another Hudson yards surrounding Penn station…

Then maybe better quality buildings that don't look like they've been caked in filth for 100 years might at least make it seem nicer.

Rents in the area beg to differ. Homeless people are a problem, but they don't pay rent. If you're going to let Vornado shove homeless people elsewhere anyway, you could just implement a plan to get the homeless off the street without giving away the city to Vornado.

Colloquially, it is what I think of when the word “blighted” is used. There are whole blocks running north from Hudson Yards that are just skid row and downright dangerous.

I will say I don’t know if the legal classification and demolition are the only solution but I’m not opposed to it either.

I work in Hudson Yards and walk around the area during the weekends. It is an eye sore, unproductive, and certainly needs work.

Makes much more sense to have that there than where Hudson Yards is.

Penn Station is the busiest train station in the western hemisphere. If you're gonna have big office towers in this brave new remote world, that's the best place to have them. Affluent bugman gets off his NJ Transit train and walks to his big important client-facing office. Super convenient. Places like Hudson Yards are just too "out of the way" at this point.

Maybe that's the thinking.

>New York is among a handful of states, including Connecticut, that use the power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development. In a 2009 case affirming New York’s authority, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled that the legal bar for blight might “have been set too low” but said it would be up to lawmakers to change
the definition.
>
>Over the past 15 years, dozens of states have placed limitations on when they can take
ownership of private property. But not New York State, which has among
the fewest restrictions on its power to rebuild areas in the name of
economic development, according to the Institute of Justice, a
libertarian policy group that tracks the issue.

Well that's very concerning. Where's all the outrage over this?

I’d rather have buildings that provide some sort of neighborhood feel and amenities rather than tall glass facades on the sidewalk.

Is the area perfect nope. But the issues around there are city wide. Time square has lots of homeless as well it’s not called blighted. This is just a piece to justify the state using its power to kick people and small businesses out of the area. Remember the number 1 rule for NYC poors and plebs must not be seen.

So the phrasing is just what they have to call it in order to kick everyone out, tear everything down, and rebuild fancier.

I mean, to be honest, the area sucks as a first impression. Tearing down the old station in the 60's was incredibly stupid and the current building is hideous, confusing, and has not held up. The surrounding area is crowded, compact, dirty, some sketchy figures hanging around, and there's a number of low crappy old buildings. It doesn't scream 'best city in the world' or 'safe' which is obviously what officials want and I don't disagree for anyone wanting that.

I do feel really sorry for all the people and businesses that get effected by this though. It's one of the only times I truly think equity is the answer for fucking up peoples lives. And it is pretty obvious they will just do the same things they keep doing in other areas. Build new office buildings and luxury condos with slightly upscale chain retail on the ground floor. And of course contracts will go to Hochul, Adams, and whoever else's family and friends. I just hope whoever ends up designing the area includes plaza/park space and somewhere for pickup/dropoff for the station... i'll welcome that.

While projects opponents and their lawyer (cited in the article) is trying to frame 'blighted' narrowly on the quality of the building to support their legal argument that the area isn't blighted the definition of blight in NYS does allow for a much broader interpretation that can include land use and other conditions.

Feel like housing would make more sense imo

Who’s going to be outraged when it’s middle/upper class people being ousted. Nobody’s punching down.

Forgot to include this, but the article also mentions that one of the plan's ringleaders is one of the principle owners in the area, and has let the properties deteriorate.

> Some properties with faulty conditions or unresolved violations are owned by Vornado Realty Trust, the neighborhood’s largest landowner, which the state has said will develop some of the new towers. Vornado, a public company that is among the city’s largest owners of offices, has accumulated more than a dozen properties in the area over the last 20 years, holding onto them in anticipation of a larger redevelopment. Of the eight sites that would be redeveloped, Vornado owns four of them and a share of another.

> Over the years, state projects aimed at eradicating blight have been criticized for rewarding developers whose properties had seemingly contributed to it . . . the lawyers noted that Vornado’s chief executive, Steven Roth, once boasted about letting a Manhattan property languish on purpose to spur the government to offer financial assistance.

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It is indeed blighted

do you think building 10 new skyscrapers will fix the congestion lol

Could definitely help. If people are commuting into office towers directly adjacent to Penn (or even connected to it) they're not walking the streets or taking the subway further into the city.

Same logic that drove redevelopment in WTC/Brookfield.

To be fair, it is a bit shit.

“Cacophony of filth”. That is the description I’ve been looking for to describe this area. I hate having to go here. Skeve central.

Nuke it from orbit comes to mind too.

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Nobody wants to live in a place where that amount of traffic, foot, car and bicycle, is right outside your front door.

The station itself is a disgraceful mire, bog, and quicksand.

You can't find a bathroom open anywhere at night. If you didn't happen to use the lousy accommodation on the inbound Amtrak trains, you're screwed. They close the main area where all the bathrooms are, and provide nothing else. Nothing provided on any of the MTA stops leading away from there.

And let's not forget the epic mutant Norway rats, who will cheerfully oversee your desperate restroom search in those desolate, still-in-construction passages.

Total ruin.

It’s blighted because it’s practically empty except for the homeless.

It probably will “fix” it—if by “fix” you mean displace….

people in the comments defending the area around penn... now ive seen everything in this sub lol....its a total shit hole, everyone knows it

But then the city would have to be the bad guy and the mayor and council have a base they need to appeal to. Can't do both and get reelected.

There's been a lot of very NIMBY threads lately. Just endless reasons not to rebuild or redo anything. City's perfect as is.

I don't know where they keep coming from.

Times Square is nowhere near as sketchy as right around Penn Station. I work in an office at 35th and I also work in Broadway theaters, and I feel much safer on foot in Times Square.

That said, I think blighted refers to the buildings. But the area is super sketchy.

> Penn Station is the busiest train station in the western hemisphere.

Fucking hell, what a massive L for the New World. Train infrastructure in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina need to get their shit together, 'cause Penn Station ain't exactly a shining beacon on a hill lmao

Seeing some homeless people who make you feel icky isn't the same thing as being blighted. It's one of the wealthiest areas of the city. Skyscrapers all around. It's nowhere near "blighted."

Well yes I know that Penn is ugly and dysfunctional, but due the sheer amount of infrastructure the Pennsylvania Railroad built there and the density of the commercial districts surrounding it Penn is in fact an insanely busy and important station.

Kinda why I'd support a redevelopment of the streets around it. Should be taking advantage of the capacity on offer here, not cutting it or pretending it doesn't exist.

It's...always crowded. It's painfully full of people, rich and poor. What are you even talking about?

It's the only way to be sure.

New York is a far more important city than any city in any of those other countries, so it makes sense.

You can have active ground floor, neighborhood scaled retail with a tower on top. Unfortunately doesn't seem to be something developers are interested in here. I'm sure a city block sized retail space that sits empty, waiting for a trader joes, is easier to manage than 20 small spaces that would actually be rented and used by people.

It's my biggest gripe with downtown Brooklyn. City Planning "created" a new neighborhood with the rezonings but forgot the neighborhood aspect. The ground plane is lifeless.

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I saw a guy get stabbed for a mcnugget at McDonald’s there. I love seeing teens on their moms stay over night in that. Shitty area for a terrible k-pop boy band. Must be like vacationing in a war zone.

yes, just want to add that a huge reason the neighborhood is so nasty is because its covered in vornado sidewalk sheds, dirty sidewalks they are responsible for cleaning, and empty vornado realestate

Maybe I need to re-read the proposal, but I don't think the state is paying for any of the private developments. By designating it as blighted, they can permit reconstruction that skirts normal review and zoning to build faster and higher than the ordinary process and air rights would allow. But the developers would be paying for it, and pay the state a fee which would in theory finance a big a chunk of the reconstruction of Penn Station and expansion to Penn South.

it's also the name of my grindcore band

Earlier this year a homeless dude outside Penn Station followed me and said he was going to kill me because I took a picture of one of the skyscrapers under construction. If they're building 10 more skyscrapers now, yall stay alert for that guy

>provide some sort of neighborhood feel

That's what we have neighborhoods for?

This is meant to be a transit/commercial/stadium epicenter. Walk south for 5 minutes and you're in Chelsea

Most of the people saying it’s blighted have never been to or probably even heard of places like hunts point, or gone across the river to Greenville. That’s blight. In fact, that’s probably closer to a DMZ.

The word blight is a bit strong, but I do think the blocks surrounding Penn Station are ripe for redevelopment (not including Koreatown) and that's before taking homelessness into consideration. At the street level it's a weird mix of scaffolding, rip off touristy bullshit, and what seem like outdated retail businesses leftover from a pre-9/11 world.

It's an odd look for midtown and most people's first impression of the city. I'm not normally on the side of Big Real Estate, but if abusing the definition of "blight" is what it takes to get development happening in this city, then maybe it's necessary.

Adding to this story pile - it was a rainy day between Penn station and port authority and a homeless man punched through my umbrella, nabbing me on my right shoulder. I was shaken for an afternoon and figured nothing would come of it if I reported it since he was punching whatever was in his way all the way down the street.

Working in the area made me feel kind of depressed about NYC. I took a small detour one day and remembered the NYC I love wasn't the cradle of filth that is Penn Station.

>Places like Hudson Yards are just too "out of the way" at this point.

It's a 6 minute ride on the 7 from Grand Central, and 10 minute ride on the 7 from Port Authority, and 10 minute walk from Penn Station. It's really not that bad for commuters.

I think this is more about what you see when you compare the environs (in terms of high-rise office and residential) of Penn Station to Grand Central. It's underdeveloped for such a central point in the city's transit network.

Cause all the money keeps going to Vornado who in turn intentionally leaves that shit undeveloped and run down to keep getting more money

The article even says as much with the Bloomberg building.

You don’t get much dirtier then port authority to Penn

>Cause all the money keeps going to Vornado who in turn intentionally leaves that shit undeveloped and run down to keep getting more money
>
>The article even says as much with the Bloomberg building.

I think you may have misunderstood. Vornado doesn't get payouts from the government for keeping their properties dilapidated. Their endgame is to postpone paying to renovate their buildings while waiting for special permission from the city/state to build something larger on the site.

It's shitty behavior if deliberate (it's not specifically alleged in this lawsuit for these properties). But they wouldn't be the only real estate company ever to rationally decide that there was no point in paying good money to refurbish buildings in the shitty part of town. Certainly not while the floor is falling out of the commercial real estate market.

The upshot is that even if it is bad behavior getting rewarded, the city is still going to penalize them by extracting billions of dollars from the company upfront to pay for infrastructure (rather put the city billions of dollars in debt upfront and have to wait for 20 years to make the money back on tax payments).

> It's really not that bad for commuters.

I'd have agreed with you in 2019, but have you heard how office workers talk these days? Seems like the vast majority are dead set against ever going to an office ever again unless it's an extremely convenient experience. Putting it directly next to Penn could help with that.

But I'm just speculating. The evidence may not bear that out.

I know plenty of people who work for anchor tenants in some of the Hudson Yards developments specifically. A few of them bought houses in the suburbs right before or during covid, and now commute into the office full time or on hybrid 2/3 day per week schedules. This comports with stats on office capacity approaching 40-50% of pre-pandemic levels.

When push came to shove, they may have disliked going back, but they're still doing it. Especially in the midst of layoffs (e.g. tech workers).

There's some paradoxical patterns here when it comes to companies investing in physical office space despite the big shifts to remote work. When you require a few days per week office attendance, you can get away with paying for a fraction of the square footage. The drop in aggregate demand means that the price falls, which may induce some companies that would have otherwise avoided getting any office space in Manhattan to consider it. Specifically when they can suddenly afford class A modern spaces. Real estate companies have dubbed this a "flight to quality", and is one of the only bright spots in the sector right now.

The area south of penn is a dump. North, not so bad

the city needs housing and inequality fixed. cleaning the station wont get rid of homeless

this would be a massive upgrade

Glad to see the Batarian street preacher from Mass Effect 2 is now deciding urban policy

> Times Square is nowhere near as sketchy as right around Penn Station.

Time square itself isn't but 8th ave in the 40s is pretty fucking sketchy.

This is what you get when your election choices are red crook or blue crook. Enjoy.

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The blight emanates from the station built into a basement of Madison Sq. Garden. We need to tear down and move MSG, rebuild a modernized version of the old Penn and make Penn a through running station that unites all the transit LIRR, NJT and Amtrak into one logical system. Make it easiest nicest commute on the east coast and the rest will take care of itself. MSG would look nice over the tracks next to Hudson Yards and Javits.

This is the most rational course, but because we can't even rebuild PABT for less than $10bn I don't think anyone wants to contemplate it.

Because it is.

I was just about to add this. Eighth Avenue between 33 and 42 is the worst. There is a distinct “element” to it.

8th Ave is a shithole in general, the air over there is just different

It’s largely under construction. It’s a maze of scaffolding which attracts the down and out. Since they are demolishing or renovating the properties, there isn’t much street life anymore.

Ripley has entered the chat

It’s not too bad, bit of a desert/vacuum though

It’s full of homeless encampments and people setting trash on the side of the street

I say get rid of the damn homeless and mentally unstable people from in and around Penn Station. Clean it up and build a new Penn Station. Add some more lights on the street. It's a dump right now.

Downtown Brooklyn right behind Midtown in the blighted race IMO…

It is …ever been there? Housing in the area is brutal

you could bulldoze that entire area and nothing of value would be lost

Blighted! Perfect description

Heroin central

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Don't forget MSG. At least NYC will be able to rebuild Penn Station properly.

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As long as they leave Pizza Suprema alone they have my blessing

If we’re just gonna start bulldozing entire blocks can we PLEASE just built the old pen station back the way it was. I fucking hate looking at Madison square gardens. It’s neither a square or a garden and I hate it. It looks like a reductionist pile of shit

Why are they bringing up a building that Vornado waffled over 30 years ago? He didn’t even get government assistance to build it — he demolished it and waited until he signed a big anchor client to make rebuilding worthwhile.

You also removed an important part of that quote that you replaced with ellipses — that the previous statement is not the case here.

Those lawyers (and you) are grappling at straws. Just rebuild the area. It is a piece of shit that annoying people are protecting in the name of a handful of decrepit buildings.

How can they say this about Tiecoon??!?

If only Hochul would declare MSG and 2 Penn Plaza blighted

And that is exactly why the area smells like hot piss. And the restrooms on the main concourse are essentially homeless shelters. I usually just pop into one of the pubs around the area to do the do.

Blighted is a legal/developer term used to justify making drastic changes to an area. It's not literal. It's the entry point for shenanigans.

Let's just hope they don't turn Penn Station into another architecturally lazy, bland, and souless white facade that feels more like a padded cell in a mental asylum quickly stained by people put inside it rather than an actual train station.

Late 19th and Early 20th century architecture in this city is so beautiful and incredible. Now all we get anytime they upgrade something is 10 billion dollars worth of misaligned glossy white panels, glossy (matte if we're lucky) white floors, and white LED lights that bounce off all the gloss and blind you. All of this juxtaposed next to the filthy rat infested, trash littered train tracks.

The white floors really get me. Who's the dumbass that keeps approving pure white for a floor color. Public spaces are barely cleaned so it immediately just turns grimy, permanently.

This is the right comment

It is a blight, but I’m not about that life of enriching Vornado Realty either. Surely there’s a middle ground there

All about the burnt nuts smell too

B&H?

Madison Square Garden is an eyesore, that's for sure.

New buildings almost anybody can afford. If they are condos, foreign buyers will step up, and we will have new empty buildings. If not, you'll have to pay 3,500 for one bedroom apartment, which they will call luxury only because it has a doorman.

How can anyone defend the area in and around Penn Station? It’s the left armpit of Manhattan. The right armpit is Port Authority. Both areas are disgusting, they smell like piss, they don’t feel safe, and they are overrun by mentally ill and homeless people who are victims of our terrible health care system. That sounds pretty blighted to me.

Grand Central doesn’t have these problems as much because the city planning was smarter and there is a lot of development around there. Hopefully the city will persuade developers to build housing in the Penn Station area so that there can be a little bit more of a neighborhood vibe.

Very interesting explanation, thanks!

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I've traveled to NYC for work a lot over the course of 7 years, so much so that I joined this sub. My trips routinely took me through Penn Station -- especially when arriving from Newark, or other cities along the acela / amtrak. It's only gotten worse over the years. I haven't been back to that area in about a year, but it was bad then, so I can't imagine what it is now.

I wouldn't call it blighted, necessarily, but there is absolutely a homelessness and addiction issue in the area, and it's on full display.

At first, I wasn't sure if they did it on purpose, but I was surprised to see no seating in Moynihan hall. Then, on second though, I figured it was absolutely done on purpose, to keep homeless out.

Fulton st mall during the day is nice because it's just normal Bk people shopping at normal stores.

At night yeah it's eerily empty.

I've been in and out of Penn at least a thousand times and all of the memories that stick out involve vomit or low-speed car accidents.

By that definition the entire city could be blighted. We have actual slums, but the area around Penn Station isn’t one of them. It’s just full of homeless people, cheap stores, and fast food. I don’t like hanging out there either, and I’m generally in favor of big capital projects but do we need more Hudson Yards? Or another Times Square? Take a walk along 14th street—it doesn’t look much better. And I’ve been to plenty of European cities—by the train station is always the sleaziest.

This comment made my day! Kudos

The lack of seating is 100% due to the homeless which of course makes it a miserable experience for travelers / commuters