LOOK: Cuomo to Turn Penn Station Into 'Empire State Station Complex'

Renderings courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s Office

MANHATTAN, NY — First the governor came for LaGuardia. Now he’s coming for Penn.

In a dramatic press conference held at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday afternoon, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans for a complete overhaul of Manhattan’s “dark and constrained” Penn Station building.

Under the governor’s proposal, the Penn building would undergo extensive renovations and would be joined with the old Farley Post Office building across 8th Avenue via underground tunnels.

Together, the two-part train hall would be called the Empire State Station Complex.

And its approximately $3 billion construction cost would be financed, as Cuomo sees it, by a private developer, ”in exchange for retail development rights.”

“This has been a long time coming, and it is a tremendous undertaking,” Cuomo said.

The governor promised that bidders on the project would be narrowed down and more concrete details of the plan would be presented to the public within 90 days.

Various iterations of a Penn/Farley overhaul were proposed by the four New York governors who served before Cuomo, too, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Elliot Brown. But — as Cuomo made sure to point out at the presser — he’s making big, ultra-modern transit makeovers in the New York City area his main thing now, and Penn’s ”bleak warren of corridors” doesn’t exactly fit the vision.

Here’s what Cuomo sees for the future of Penn and Farley, courtesy of his office:

Penn Station Redevelopment: The existing Penn Station facility, which lies beneath Madison Square Garden and between 7th and 8th Avenues, will be dramatically renovated. The project will widen existing corridors, reconfiguring ticketing and waiting areas, improve connectivity between the lower levels and street level, bring natural light into the facility, improve signage, simplify navigation and reduce congestion, and expand and upgrade the retail offerings and passenger amenities on all levels of the station. The new station will include Wi-Fi, modernized train information displays and streamlined ticketing.

Several design alternatives will be considered, including major exterior renovations involving 33rd street, 7th avenue, 8th avenue, and/or Madison Square Garden Theater. Renderings of all of these options are available in the Governor’s presentation here.

Farley Post Office Redevelopment: As part of the Governor’s proposal, the Farley Post Office, which sits across 8th Avenue from Penn Station, will be redeveloped into a state-of-the-art train hall for Amtrak, the new train hall, with services for passengers of the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and the new Air Train to LaGuardia Airport. The train hall will be connected to Penn Station via an underground pedestrian concourse, and increase the station’s size by 50 percent. At 210,000 square feet, the train hall will be roughly equivalent in size to the main room at Grand Central Terminal. The new facility will offer more concourse and circulation space, include retail space and modern amenities such as Wi-Fi and digital ticketing, and feature 30 new escalators, elevators and stairs to speed passenger flow. The Governor’s proposal also calls for an iconic yet energy-efficient architectural design.

A rendering from the inside of the proposed train hall is available here.