2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land - 47

public opposition at the time. The decision
became infamous in the decades that followed,
with many people expressing dismay
over what has been called one of the worst
changes in the history of the city.
The constant flow of commuters and tourists
keeps the neighborhood bustling, as do
the major sporting and entertainment events
at Madison Square Garden. Many of the surrounding
buildings and retail offerings have
languished, however, leading to calls for Penn
Station to be revamped and the area revitalized.
The
state did just that when it announced
a $7 billion makeover of Penn Station in 2021.
Plans call for opening up the station by letting
in more light, widening corridors, and turning
the multilevel layout into a single-level train
hall. The plan has had its ups and downs since
it was first announced.
Originally, Vornado was set to develop several
office towers that would help pay for the
train station overhaul, but that agreement has
since been abandoned, with New York Governor
Kathy Hochul saying the state would be
" decoupling " the Penn Station overhaul from
a plan to fund it through the development of
several office towers nearby.
Still, Vornado is moving forward with completing
Penn 2 this spring. With transformative
plans for the office space it owns, Vornado
wants to change not only the buildings in the
neighborhood but also the perception and
profile of the Penn District. " We're creating
a real new district in a district that has been
starved of [many improvements] forever, " says
Glen Weiss, executive vice president of office
leasing at Vornado, pointing to the additions
that the Penn District will bring, including new
public plazas, wider sidewalks, additional trees,
and new retail stores. " That's the theme. "
In with the new
Beginning in the 1980s, Vornado began
buying up office properties around Penn Station,
eventually assembling a campus of 10
million square feet (930,000 sq m) of office
space in what company leaders now call the
Penn District. Today, the company is in phase
one of its plan for the Penn District, which
comprises 5.5 million square feet (511,000 sq
m) of repositioning office space.
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47
The first chunk of space in the phase was
the Farley Post Office project, where Facebook's
parent company, Meta, ended up leasing
the entirety of the 740,000 square-foot
(69,000 sq m) office portion of the property.
The first phase also includes the redevelopment
of Penn 1, which has 2.5 million square
feet (232,000 sq m) of office space, and
Penn 2, which will have 1.8 million square feet
(167,000 sq m).
Formerly known as Two Penn Plaza, Penn
2 is a 31-story office tower built atop Penn
Station in 1968. Vornado is spending $750 million
to reposition the property, which is adjacent
to an expansive public plaza and is on a
double-wide block, one of the few that exist in
Manhattan.
One of the most distinctive parts of the
tower's revamp is the addition of a new structure
to the podium floors of the building, a
feature the developer calls the " bustle. " The
added space wraps around the front of the
building, spanning the entire block on 7th
Avenue between West 31st and West 33rd
streets.
Major changes to the building included
adding a glass curtain wall to let in more light,
something the building didn't have much of
before. The new windows are triple glazed,
which reduces energy consumption; an antiquated
and cumbersome mechanical system
Vornado is nearing
completion of a major
repositioning of its Penn 2
office property atop Penn
Station. The entire 1968
building will be reskinned
with a new curtain wall,
and it will gain corner
loggias on every floor.
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2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land

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