www.buildthestation.com, to help publicize the campaign.
"The city should be applauded for doing its part in finding a way to finance $2 billion," says REBNY chairman Mary Ann Tighe in a release. "But spending $2 billion for one subway station instead of two is not making the most of the investment the city has made." REBNY president Steven Spinola says in the release that "West Side development will be seriously hampered unless this subway station is built."
According to the coalition, the area near the originally planned West 41st station is expected to support a population that will grow to about 32,500 workers and 27,500 residents over the next decade. The affected area includes an estimated 19 million square feet of residential and commercial space, with 10,286 planned residential units and 3,358 new hotel rooms.
"Because of construction underway in the area, both residents and the area workforce largely assume that the station is still being built," Gary Labarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, in the release. "The truth is, at the moment, it is not."
Currently, the only station planned for the 7 extension is slated for 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue, near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The West 41st stop was scrapped in 2008 after the Hudson Yards Development Corp. said the funding wasn't there to build two stations.
Labarbera has lent his support to the initiative, along with Louis Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers' Association, and Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress. To date, the group has held meetings with US Sens. Charles Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand, among others.
In related news, Schumer on Tuesday announced that the long-planned Moynihan Station project would receive $83.3 million through the US Department of Transportation's Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program. The TIGER funds will go toward phase one of the project, which ultimately seeks to transform the James A. Farley Post Office into an extension of the existing Penn Station, located across the street from the Farley building.
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
