Not sure where you got the idea that I think that new office buildings are dead (unless I misread your post). If anything, my post supports your take in a sense that it it advocates for construction of new office buildings around Penn Station and conversion of old ones into residences.

Having said that, the area can definitely use new residential construction, as well. Ita not like living within a direct train ride of anywhere in Manhattan and literally all of the metropolitan region is not a highly desirable amenity.

Many of the buildings in the area, particularly smaller, schlocky postwar office buildings, need to be torn down and redeveloped; however, the area also boasts a great number of magnificent prewar high-rise buildings, particularly around the Garment District, which ought to be preserved and protected. As many of these are obsolete as office buildings, or at least would be difficult, and some. Early impossible, to retrofit to a level where they can compete with new office buildings, they are better off retrofitted as apartments.

The new towers would revive the area's office stock while the prewar renovations would create thousands of new apartments, transforming the Penn Station area and the Garment District into a vibrant, mixed-use, centrally located, round-the-clock neighborhood with excellent transit service and close proximity to central Midtown, the waterfront, and Lower Manhattan.

One of the things that makes neighborhoods great is their adjacency to other great, or at least functional, neighborhoods. People may think what they will about Hudson Yards, but, if nothing else, it is hard to deny that it is a functional, if controversial, urban neighborhood, which replaced a whole lot of nothing (neighborhood-wise) and thus vastly improved the appeal of the adjacent Penn Station and Garment District areas.

I'm pretty sure there is now, though I don't think there was one, at least not to my knowledge, in '09, when I lived in Tokyo and wanted a cheesesteak.

While, as you said, the Penn Station area is quite livable as it is, I think it's universally agreeable that the area still has room for some serious streetscape improvements, among many other things

Then the obvious solution is to make such neighborhoods appealing. Before the 2000s, the Financial District was also considered absolutely unappealing for residential uses, and now tens of thousands of people live there. In great part, the transition was achieved via office building conversions, streetscape improvements, and introduction of new resident-friendly retail. Essentials such as a massive volume of public transit and plenty of conversion-friendly office buildings were already there.

As such, there is no reason this cannot happen around, say, the Penn Station. I know, the area is a dump, but in the 1990s, the Financial District was also considered a dump, at least in the off-work hours. Otherwise, the Penn Station area also already boasts key essentials such as some of the nation's best mass transit service as well as ample conversion-ready office buildings, particularly of the prewar vintage (due to considerations such as smaller floor plate sizes, operable windows, and generally more attractive architecture, as well as frequently outdated tech capabilities, prewar buildings tend to make for better residential conversion candidates than their counterparts).

Similar conditions exist elsewhere throughout Lower and Mid-Manhattan, as well as elsewhere in the boroughs, and while it will take a lot of work (including in complicated fields such as education provision and homeless management), if a neighborhood's only drawback is that it's "unappealing," the solution is generally rather simple as compared to, say, a lack of subway service.