The powerful head of the Vornado Realty Trust seems to have upset the wind of Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to establish New office skyscrapers in the Bin Station area On Tuesday, when CEO Stephen Roth said it was not the time for a big new development.
Publicly traded Vornado owned most of the ten websites dedicated to it in the Western 1930s Large-scale rebuilding. Roth made the shocking retraction on an investor conference call on Tuesday. Noting the improvements Vornado had made to the buildings near the station she already owned, he seemed to ask for pause in bringing up any new ones.
“I must say that the headwinds in the current environment are not at all favorable for the development from the ground up,” Roth said.
When asked if that meant he would change or scale back the state-sanctioned plan for the Pennsylvania station neighborhood, he said, “That’s not something we’re going to go into now.” Apparently he meant he wasn’t ready to discuss it.
But Evercore ISI analyst Steve Sakwa told Crain’s that Roth’s statement meant the project was “definitely delayed” due to a lack of demand for the office. “They are not going to spend billions to build an empty building,” he said.
Ruth’s decline doesn’t mean the Penn County Giant Project is dead, because Vornado hasn’t been able to start building for several years anyway.
Although the proposal for 18 million square feet of new buildings has been approved by the state’s Public Authority oversight body, it still faces environmental challenges and other reviews. At least three lawsuits were recently filed to block the scheme.
However, Roth’s statement cast a shadow over the controversial proposal to remodel the Pennsylvania area, which calls for the wholesale evacuation of residents and businesses to make room for new towers that would decouple from revenue to pay for the new Penn station. Vornado is seen as the driving force behind the plan blessed by Hochul and her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. Ruth donated heavily to both governors.
Critics say the Penn project will provide tax breaks to Vornado and enrich the company without enough guarantee for a new train station, which is the project’s supposed rationale.
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