rendering of proposed Eighth Avenue facade of Penn Station. (Nova Concepts/Richard Cameron)

Crain’s New York, the financial newspaper, reports that Vornado Realty Trust has announced it is delaying its plan to build ten skyscrapers in the near vicinity of Pennsylvania Station. “The headwinds in the current environment are not at all conducive to … development,” Vornado’s Steven Roth told Crain’s yesterday. That is a delay, not a cancellation, to be sure, but today’s delay often becomes tomorrow’s cancellation.

Because that news is so good, I have interrupted this blog’s reprinting of chapters from my book Lost Providence. The series will resume with my next post.

The Empire Station Complex project, as the state megaproject is known, would use lease money from ten new towers to raise money to pay for renovating Penn Station. The plan has raised almost universal opposition by those in the city who see it as urban renewal most New Yorkers thought had disappeared in the 1960s and 70s. As such, it would demolish at least a dozen historic buildings and displace thousands of workers and residents. However, it had been considered a done deal in the real-estate community. Yesterday’s news may change that.

The delay certainly must improve chances that the state will entertain alternate proposals to the so-called  Empire Station Complex. Perhaps the best plan, known as ReThink Penn Station, would rebuild along the lines of Charles Follen McKim’s original Penn Station design, completed in 1910 and demolished in the 1960s. The underground station that resulted from that blockhead decision has served passengers and New York poorly for decades. The ReThink Penn Station plan would relocate the Madison Square Garden sports arena from atop the station and adopt a modern “through-running” regional rail system to end its current terminal status, which hinders system efficiency.

Sixty percent of New Yorkers prefer a plan that would include rebuilding Penn Station, just as two of three (or more) American prefer traditional design. As historian Vincent Scully said after the original station was demolished, “We entered the city as gods; now we scuttle in like rats.” A more uplifting entry into the world’s greatest city can happen if we want it to. It is above all a political decision. Yesterday’s news may help promote that possibility.