Penn Station Belongs to New Yorkers
Streetsblog has closely followed the Trump administration’s evolving plans to rehabilitate Manhattan’s Penn Station and develop its immediate surroundings. Today, we are publishing the following op-ed by Rep. Jerry Nalder (D-Manhattan) and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D-Manhattan), who are sounding the alarm about the federal government’s plans for New York’s busiest train station.
We represent Penn Station.
We represent the riders who pass through it every day, the workers who keep it running, the businesses that depend on it, and the communities in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and the surrounding Manhattan neighborhoods that live with the consequences of every decision made about its future.
Penn Station is not an abstract national asset, a line item in a federal transportation plan, or a real estate opportunity for billionaires. It is essential local infrastructure at the center of New York City’s daily life.
Every day, more than 600,000 New Yorkers and regional commuters depend on Penn Station. Amtrak — the agency that owns this station and is now driving its redevelopment — serves just 7 percent of these riders; the MTA and NJ Transit serve 93 percent. And yet Amtrak, under the direction of the Trump White House, is making all the decisions. Without asking any of us.
Penn Station was built to accommodate 200,000 passengers a day. It now handles more than three times that number. It is not just overcrowded — it is operating in a state of permanent crisis. New Yorkers deserve better. But the answer to that crisis cannot be a secret deal that hands the station’s future to politically connected developers while locking out the public.
No one disputes that Penn Station needs to be renovated — this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and we want to see it done.
But not like this.
This is also the same president who froze $16 billion in Gateway Tunnel funding and demanded Penn Station be renamed after him in exchange for releasing it. His own White House confirmed it. New Yorkers haven’t forgotten.
The appointment of Penn Transformation Partners as the “master developer” for Penn Station was made behind closed doors. No full public request for proposals was released. No complete cost estimate was disclosed. No public hearings were held. New York City, New York State, local elected officials, and the communities most affected were sidelined. And all three shortlisted developer teams have direct ties to Trump donors — and all three lobbied the White House directly for this contract.
This was not a competitive process. It was a political favor dressed up as one.
The MTA — whose riders make up the overwhelming majority of Penn Station’s daily users — was given no meaningful seat at the table. The MTA holds legally binding leasehold rights at Penn Station, rights it has relied on to invest in the 33rd Street corridor and protect the rider experience it is responsible for. Those rights must not be quietly bargained away in a process the MTA was deliberately excluded from.
And let us be direct about the money. Estimates put the total cost of this project up to $7 billion. The potential public shortfall is nearly $6 billion. Washington has committed just $43 million so far. Someone is going to be stuck with that bill. It will not be Donald Trump. It will not be the developers. It will be New York’s commuters — hit with surcharges on their MTA and NJ Transit tickets — and New York’s taxpayers, left absorbing costs they never agreed to fund.
There is also a dangerous piece of legislation moving through Congress that would make all of this worse. The McDowell and Moulton Amendment — adopted as part of the BUILD America 250 Act — would hand Amtrak sweeping new authority over development around intercity rail stations. It would allow Amtrak to own, lease, and enter into private development agreements around stations like Penn. It would let Amtrak-linked projects avoid state and local taxes, building codes, and zoning requirements.
In plain English: a federally controlled entity operating under Trump’s direction could gain the power to reshape land use around Penn Station while exempting itself from New York’s laws, weakening our tax base, and bypassing our communities. Not temporarily. Permanently.
Property taxes fund our schools, our public safety, our housing, and our basic services. Granting private developers exemption from those obligations — in one of the most valuable real estate markets in the world — is not transit-oriented development. It is a public giveaway on a breathtaking scale.
We are not against transit-oriented development. Done right — transparently, locally, in service of riders and communities — it can be a genuine public good. A real 24/7 neighborhood around Penn Station, with affordable housing, retail, and public spaces, would be transformative for this city. That is exactly the kind of vision New York deserves.
But that vision cannot be decided in a backroom deal between a president and his donors. It must be decided with the community, for the community.
New Yorkers deserve straight answers to basic questions. Who picked this developer and why? What will this project actually cost? Who will pay when the bill comes due? What happens to funding for subway repairs, accessibility upgrades, and state-of-good-repair work across the region? Will our tax base be protected? Will our zoning laws be respected?
We will not allow New Yorkers to be forced to finance a federally driven, Trump-directed redevelopment plan through backroom deals, diverted transit funding, or legislatively imposed exemptions from local law. We will fight the McDowell and Moulton Amendment at every stage. We will demand the release of the full RFP, the cost projections, and all financing assumptions. We will protect the MTA’s leasehold rights. We will insist on public hearings and real community engagement. And we will use every tool available — legislative, legal, and political — to make sure New York City, New York State, and the communities that depend on this station have a real voice in its future.
Penn Station belongs to New Yorkers. Its future must be decided in public — not in the Oval Office, not in a developer’s boardroom, and not in legislation slipped through a committee without debate.
The people who use this station every day deserve better. And we intend to make sure they get it.
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