7.18.22 - Mayor Adams approves Penn Station plan that includes tax break for developers
' Mayor Adams on Monday gave his blessing to Gov. Hochul’s controversial plan to overhaul Penn Station — and said he supports using property tax revenues from 10 proposed skyscrapers to help pay for the work.
The plan includes gutting the train hub beneath Madison Square Garden without relocating the arena and aims to expand the station to the south by razing an entire Midtown block. State officials have said the expansion is necessary to handle additional train traffic from the Gateway Program, a collection of projects that includes a new Penn Station and is centered on the construction of two new Hudson River rail tunnels.
The agreement inked by Hochul and Adams said the property taxes from the towers will cover 12.5% of the costs for “Penn reconstruction and Penn expansion,” 50% of the costs for “transit improvements” and all of the costs for “public real improvements.”
The project’s total price tag is unclear, but its supporters have pegged it at roughly $40 billion. New York State is expected to pay a quarter of that, or around $10 billion.
Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed to finance the project with taxes from the new buildings, half of which would be built by the mega developer Vornado. The new buildings would bring in fresh property tax dollars — but a deal cut with the developers would allow the bigwigs to pay an estimated $1.2 billion less in taxes than the law requires, a report published last week by the good government group Reinvent Albany found.
“Some would like to say, ‘Well, we’re just giving rich cats tax breaks,’” Adams said during a news conference. “No — they’re going into improving the infrastructure. And when you start dealing with that infrastructure, it costs money.” '
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