Will Penn Station riders get Mystery Box A, Mystery Box B or Mystery Box C?
Amtrak quietly selected three potential "master developers" for the renovation of the massive transit hub — and won't say whether it will make public its criteria for picking the winner, which Penn Station czar Andy Byford previously said will be subject to the final approval of President Trump.
In an unpublicized, 25-word update posted to the Amtrak Vendor Portal on Tuesday, the federal railroad revealed the names of three companies that answered its call to express interest in building the mega-project — with no additional information.
When Amtrak invited companies to get into the Penn redevelopment game last year, it said it would issue a request for proposals once it had a shortlist of interested parties.
Is that still the plan? An Amtrak spokesman declined to answer on Wednesday.
"Three qualified teams have been shortlisted to compete to become the Master Developer and lead the delivery of Penn Station’s comprehensive transformation," said railroad rep W. Kyle Anderson. "The Master Developer will be selected in May and announced by June."
Anderson made no indication that Amtrak plans to put out a public "request for proposals," or RFP, that is typical of large public works projects — and stopped responding when Streetsblog pressed him on the matter.
Little is known beyond the names of the plans and the lead company for each plan. The winning companies, identified by project name and lead developer, are Penn Forward Now (Fengate), Penn Transformation Partners (Halmar) and Grand Penn Partners (Macquarie).
It's unclear if the public is going to get a look at the RFP or what the three chosen developers are offering to build. The Amtrak procurement portal has no information beyond the names of the companies.
As of press time, the portal did not have any information about an upcoming or active RFP for the Penn reconstruction — raising concerns that the Trump-run railroad will advance the project in secrecy.
"Everyone should be able to see the RFP," said Reinvent Albany Senior Policy Advisor Rachael Fauss. "Without it, we don't know how the selection process will work, whether it's competitive, or whether this has been pre-selected with one contractor in mind the whole time. The default is being public for these things.
"Andy Byford has been promising a transparent open process," added Fauss. "If this RFP isn't public, that isn't transparent."
Of the three companies selected for the project, only Halmar was previously involved in an effort to rebuild Penn Station. Halmar is the construction wing of conglomerate ASTM, which proposed a Penn redevelopment in 2023 that involved knocking down Madison Square Garden's Hulu Theater to build a grand entrance on Eighth Avenue.
ASTM's proposal involved creating a single-level station, which Byford has said is required to even be considered as a potential developer for the project.
"Grand Penn Partners" is the brain-child of Trump donor Thomas Klingenstein, according to Gothamist. Klingenstein has proposed to move Madison Square Garden to Seventh Avenue and build an above-ground Penn Station with a "classically styled artifice."
Fengate's "Penn Forward Now" has not been mentioned in any previous Penn redevelopment plans.
The federal government took over the Penn Station redevelopment from New York last April at the heights of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's still-unsuccessful bid to kill congestion pricing. After the federal takeover of the redevelopment, Duffy put Byford, a former top MTA official, in charge of the project, which the British rail exec has said will begin construction in 2027.
Key questions about the project remain unanswered — specifically how it gets funded and by whom, something Fauss said could be answered by a public RFP.
Byford and Amtrak have framed the project as a type of public-private partnership known as a "Design, Build, Operate, Manage and Finance," an arrangement in which a developer designs and builds the project with its own funding, which it can then recoup through "user fees" once the project is done.
That arrangement could leave commuter railroad riders on NJ Transit and the MTA paying a surcharge on their tickets, or simply pass the costs onto the three railroads that operate out of Penn Station: MTA, New Jersey Transit and Amtrak.
Real estate giant Vornado — also owned by a Trump donor — could also get involved in the process somehow if the feds attempt to leverage a dormant but powerful state rezoning to fund the station redevelopment.
Byford pledged to fight for federal money for the project, but without an actual cost attached to any of shortlisted bids, it's impossible to know if even $3 billion or $4 billion in federal grants and loans will cover most of the project's cost. In October, Byford said the Trump White House will have final say over the effort.
"If I meet with some resistance, or if we have someone that's being unduly obstructive, or something that's causing me a problem, well, my trump card is the Trump card," Byford said, though he later attempted to walk back the comments.
Fauss suggested New Yorkers should be wary of how the notoriously pay-to-play Trump administration approaches the project.
"The two risks to the public here are is there some real estate deal that they're expecting that's similar to Vornado Penn Station, proposal? And then are there going to be user fees of any kind?" she said. "Those are the back door ways that New York will have to pay."
