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If the thread already exists I apologize

City Realty
By Carter B. Horsley
February 09, 2010

Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust has submitted plans to the City Planning Commission for a 1,190-foot-high office tower on the site of the 22-story Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets.

The tower would contain about 2 million square feet of commercial space including trading floors.

It has been designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli, which designed 1 Beacon Court on Lexington Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets for Mr. Roth's company.

According to an article today by Eliot Brown at therealdeal.com, Vornado began the city's land-use-review process for the project today and last month submitted two similar versions of its plan to the commission: one for a single-tenant building and the other for a multi-tenant building. The illustration (below) shows a rendering of the multi-tenant tower.

In late 2007, Merrill Lynch selected Vornado and its site for a new world headquarters but, Mr. Brown noted, "just days later, preoccupied with $7.9 billion in write-downs, Merrill's board held off on voting on the headquarters plan, instead ousting Mr. O'Neal," adding that "The proposed $3 billion tower plan followed him out the door."

Vornado has told the commission that if it does not get the approvals needed for the project, it would proceed with an "as-of-right" commercial tower of about 1.15 million square feet.

Vornado has been acquiring land in the vicinity of the old Pennsylvania Station for several years and had hoped to be able to use all of its unused air-rights to build at least one very major skyscraper on the existing site of Madison Square Garden, which it did not own. The owner of the garden, however, recently decided against selling and moving the area to the James A. Farley Post Office Building one block to the west.

The original Pennsylvania Station was designed by McKim Mead & White and was widely recognized as one of the city's greatest Beaux-Arts buildings. Its demolition in 1964 led to the belated creation of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania was erected in 1919 directly across Seventh Avenue from the famous train station and was also designed by McKim Mead & White. At one time, the hotel said it was the world's largest.

The plan to relocate Madison Square Garden and build a new train station and demolish the Hotel Pennsylvania were a central part of much larger plans by the city to significantly redevelop much of southwest midtown Manhattan, a plan that involved an expansion of the Javits Convention Center, the creation of a major new angled boulevard between 42nd and 34th Streets to be known as Hudson Yards, and the creation of a major new residential and office complex on platforms over the east and west train yards between 30th and 33rd Streets east of 10th Avenue, and an extension to the west of the 7 subway line.

The Hotel Pennsylvania is one of the last surviving examples of very large hotels in the city built to accommodate train travelers.

The hotel, whose address is 401 Seventh Avenue, was erected by the Pennsylvania Railroad and was operated by Ellsworth Statler and was acquired by the Hotels Statler Company in 1949. After all 17 Statler hotels were acquired by Conrad Hilton in 1954, it became The Statler Hilton. In the early 1980s, Hilton sold the property and it became the New York Statler again. In 1984, it was acquired by the Penta chain and became the New York Penta. In 1992, it reverted to the Hotel Pennsylvania.

The hotel's telephone number, Pennsylvania 6-5000 is supposedly the New York City telephone number in longest continuous use and was famous as the name of a song by the Glenn Miller band.

The local community board voted 21 to 8 to 8 with two present and not voting to recommend November 8, 2007 that the Hotel Pennsylvania be designated an official city landmark, but in February, 2008, however, a spokesman for the landmarks commission confirmed that the agency had decided not to hold a hearing on its possible designation.


(Got the info from Wired NY)