Grand Central

Newpennstation was catching up with our reading this weekend, and came across the article "Winged Victories, The soaring ambition of Santiago Calatrava" from last week's New Yorker. The profile of Calatrava, written by Rebecca Mead, included this passage about what role train stations play in cities.

A station, Calatrava believes, should be a grand gateway to a city, like the Gothic stone gates of his native Valencia, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to impress upon the rest of Europe the city’s status as a trading power. “If you conceive these buildings with a purely functionalistic point of view, they easily become obsolete,” he told me. “In Zurich, they made a kind of shopping mall in front of the main station. Nobody wants to shop there. The place that, twenty years ago, everyone thought was very beautiful, today everybody says is a place where they never want to go. People don’t even want to traverse through, and in the night it is insecure, because there is no grandeur. They just wanted to take advantage of the poor fellow whose train arrives in the city to go to his job—to sell him a piece of bread, or a tomato, or a juice, or a beer.” Calatrava has built more than ten stations so far in his career. “You go into Grand Central and you immediately understand that this has been done for you: it is a gift to everyone, it is a gift to the city,” he told me. “I understand the problem of the person who cannot eat because he has no money; I understand how tragic is the person who is homeless. Because of that, I like doing stations, because they are the home of everybody, and because you are providing a beautiful moment in the life of people who work so hard. I am not a food producer; I am not a doctor; I am an architect, and I use my work for a sense of philanthropy, and not for any glory. This is a Stoic concept: to stay in the middle, which permits you to be free from the ambitions of the high, and permits you, through your liberty, to deliver something to those who don’t have anything.”

We couldn't agree more about that a train station should serve as a "grand gateway" to a city, and that Grand Central is a "gift to everyone." Has anyone been to the train station in Zurich? What do people think about the "shopping mall" impact he describes?

Read
"Winged Victories, The soaring ambition of Santiago Calatrava" in the The New Yorker by Rebecca Mead.

Photo via flickr from Robbanz.

Doors opening on a moving train? Train cars decoupling mid-trip? According to an article in today’s New York Times, New Jersey Transit is stretched so thin to keep up with record demand that many experts are wondering if it is cutting corners on maintenance.

That is pretty much the state of the nation’s transportation infrastructure according to two experts who spoke at the MAS last night in the first of our programs on Moynihan Station.

“We are in the midst of a transportation crisis in this country,” said Don Phillips, a journalist who has worked for the Washington Post and International Herald Tribune. “But we’re like the frog in the pan of water; we’re content to sit in the water as the heat is gradually turned up – and before we know it we’ll be boiled.”

Phillips provided a global overview of the transportation crisis and discussed how Europe, Asia, and even Mexico are placing massive investments in their infrastructure. France, for instance, is building rail tunnels “like crazy” for trains that, in some cases, will be carrying trucks. Iran is on a rail building boom. And Mexico is building a huge new port and rail network to compete with the Port of Los Angeles.

But “we have no vision at all,” said Phillips. “All we can say now is no new taxes.” He blamed the federal government for not spending a dime on passenger rail, but explained that some states and cities are getting around the problem to build small intercity networks. We have previously covered Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to draw attention to the infrastructure crisis through his new group, Building America's Future.

“People would rather ride a train than fly,” he said. “We are in a Golden Age for passenger rail with nothing to do about it.”

Walter Zullig, legal consultant and counsel emeritus, Metro-North Railroad, followed Phillips by pointing out that each commuter rail in the city, LIRR, Metro-North, and NJ Transit, is experiencing all time high numbers of daily riders. Amtrak continues to break records – even turning some people away – despite the fact it cannot afford any new equipment. “I don’t know how they do it,” he said.

Zullig then provided an overview of the major metropolitan region rail projects: LIRR East Side Access, Second Avenue Subway, 7 line extension, ARC, Tappan Zee Bridge, and Moynihan Station.

Zullig noted that regardless of “what happens upstairs” in the Moynihan Station there is an urgent need for track and platform improvements.

Regarding ARC, the trans-Hudson tunnel project and new station in Macy’s basement, Zullig said it would be “highly desirable” to bring the tunnels into Penn Station. Making the connection to Grand Central is “complicated building but could be done,” said Zullig. Many listeners learned a new term when one audience member accused New Jersey of lacking the “testicular capacity” to do just that.

Asked to identify the main obstacles to achieving a world-class train network in the New York region, Zullig echoed Phillips by identifying the negligence of the federal government. “They have abdicated their responsibility,” he said. “To say that states should take over the Northeast Corridor is ludicrous.”

If the transportation crisis is upon us what can we do about it?

“The biggest opportunity for rail is the environmental considerations, especially as energy prices continue to climb,” said Zullig. “Education about the benefits of rail – in terms of energy, air quality, quality of life – can go a long way. We need to create a ground swell of public demand. Then the politicians would be forced to listen.”

“It’s a matter of turning around the public attitude - and sometimes it takes a crisis,” said Zullig. He pointed to the example of Grand Central and described how the surrounding neighborhood was once a badly polluted and dangerous slum when the tracks were open to the air. But after a couple of really awful accidents occurred Penn Central stepped in and rebuilt the station. “Now look at it – they made a beautiful neighborhood out of what was a dump.”

Our next Moynihan Station event features Jill Jonnes, the author of Conquering Gotham. April 23rd at 6:30. Click here for more information.

PBS recently aired an “American Experience” program on Grand Central and launched a companion website with historic images, news stories, and anecdotes. You can also watch the full program online. The building of the station is highlighted, but no attention is given to the major renovation during the 1990s.

Click here to watch the Grand Central PBS documentary online

Michael Ewing is principle of Williams Jackson Ewing, a retail real estate development, leasing, and consulting firm based in Baltimore, and developer of the tremendously successful restorations of Grand Central Terminal and Union Station in Washington, D.C.

In 1994, Williams Jackson Ewing and LaSalle Partners were awarded the rights to redevelop Grand Central Terminal. Williams Jackson Ewing conceptualized, merchandised, leased and opened 119 stores and restaurants, which include a mix of local New York favorites and popular chains. Prior to becoming partner at WJE, he was Vice President at The Rouse Company from 1972-1985.

Ewing is widely recognized as a thought leader on urban retail development trends. He talked to New Penn Station about the retail plan at Grand Central, making public/private partnerships work, and the retail potential of Moynihan Station ("a lot of retail," but could work).

Click here to read the interview.