All stories about "Megaproject"

If an arena falls in the woods, and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? Barely. Late yesterday, Reuters filed a story detailing Vornado Realty Trust executives' new vision for the Moynihan Station project and the endangered Hotel Pennsylvania, and it barely registered a blip on the radar. In fact, if it wasn't for the Municipal Art Society's New Penn Station blog, we would have missed it entirely. According to Reuters, if the plan to buy Madison Square Garden to force a move to the Farley Post Office doesn't work, Vornado will move ahead with Plan B, which involves a serious renovation of the existing Penn Station that includes the removal of the theater at MSG and the construction of new grand entrances on Eighth and Seventh Avenues. What's not clear is if the theater—excuse us, WaMu Theater—would be moved to the back of Moynihan, like what was originally planned for MSG (probs not, given the cost-cutting going on) or if it would just be sent to that big junkyard in the sky. And if you thought the apparent death of Moynihan Station was all the craziness in store for you, you're wrong!

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As many of the city's big megaprojects are stalling or in shambles, there's a proposal to force the Empire State Development Corporation, which oversees some of them, to issue "progress reports" to tell everybody how thing are going. Or not. Details were provided by Eliot Brown in yesterday's Observer and the story is still making the rounds today. The proposed legislation in Albany is aimed at "providing greater transparency and accountability" on a number of projects including the expansion of the Javits Center, the huge West Side rail yards development, Moynihan Station, the 7 Train extension, World Trade Center redevelopment, the Calatrava PATH Station, the Willets Point plan and Atlantic Yards. Richard Brodsky, the assemblyman sponsoring the legislation, say that a number of significant projects are in "various states of collapse" and that if/when they tank they could endanger a number of agency budgets in including the MTA. Maybe if it was issued as a monthly magazine, they could call it Despair.
· Progress Reports Urged for Big Development Projects [Sun]
· Brodsky Seeks Tell-All Report on Every Mega Project in the City [NYO]

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If anyone can handle more debate about another planned New York City megaproject, the huge (and, yes, very controversial) Hunters Point South (aka Queens West South) development has taken a small step forward. Broker/blogger Andrew Fine has gotten hold of a new "scoping" document for the project, which would rise on a Long Island City wasteland, and finds that it has gained more than an extra acre of parkland but has also gone from 6,500 to 6,650 units of housing (the definition of "affordable" in the plan has been the subject of bitter dispute). A school has also grown significantly. Fine writes that "it seems as if none" of the concerns raised by residents and others have been taken into consideration and that the plan "has simply gone from bad to even worse" by adding another building's worth of housing and expanding the school.
· Hunters Point South Plan Grows Denser, Yet Finds An Extra Acre Of Park [A Fine Blog]
· More Hating on Hunters Point South [Curbed]
· Hunters Point South Plan Called 'Archie Bunker Vision' [Curbed]

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