New Penn Station Plaza Will Open Up Busy Midtown Street

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A formerly traffic-clogged street next to Penn Station will soon be filled with trees, tables and chairs, and public programming as the city begins work on a new pedestrian plaza.

The plaza will run along West 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. It will be built jointly by the Department of Transportation and the real estate company Vornado, who presented the project's design to Community Board 5 on Monday.

The project coincides with the expansion of the Long Island Rail Road concourse at Penn Station, which is happening beneath 33rd Street and will be completed in 2023. Work on the new plaza will begin in January 2023 and take about a year, Vornado representative Judy Kessler told the board.

Once complete, the block-long plaza will be lined with circular tree pits, paved with granite stones and decked out with metal tables, chairs and trash cans. The sidewalk will be extended further into Seventh Avenue, and mounted lighting will be installed on adjacent buildings.

"We see this as a really key pedestrian circulation space, one that will help with accessibility and create a really welcoming and inviting environment for all the different people that are coming in and out of the area," said Emily Weidenhof, DOT's director of public space.

Formerly open to car traffic, 33rd Street was closed in 2015 to become a temporary plaza. In recent months, it has been largely off-limits due to the LIRR work happening underground.

Plans for 33rd Street also coincide with Vornado's renovations of its adjacent office buildings at 1 and 2 Pennsylvania Plaza — slated for completion in mid-2022 and 2023, respectively.

The plaza is separate from the state's plans to build a major new train hall at Penn Station — but presenters noted that the station's future entrance would include a new entrance bordering the 33rd Street plaza.

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