The New York City Planning Commission has voted to keep Madison Square Garden, Manhattan’s high-profile sports and entertainment venue above the Penn Station transit hub, in place for another 10 years.
The 9-1 commission vote Wednesday in favor of granting Madison Square Garden a special permit to operate at its current site comes after parent company Madison Square Garden Entertainment in February filed a request to keep the home to the NBA’s Knicks and NHL’s Rangers in its present location. The venue’s 2013 city arena permit is set to expire July 24.
The decision on whether Madison Square Garden will stay put now goes to the New York City Council for a hearing and vote.
Because the special permit application is currently going through public review, the iconic venue can operate until the process concludes.
The decision comes after Madison Square Garden has made a number of commitments as part of its application for a special permit this time, in contrast to when it made no similar commitments 10 years earlier when the commission considered its request, Dan Garodnick, chair of the commission and director of the Department of City Planning, said in a review session Monday, adding all city venues housing a crowd of over 2,500 people require a special permit.
Commitments include making additional public realm improvements such as adding planter benches, improving signage, and identifying off-site locations for loading trucks.
Madison Square Garden also promised to “collaborate” with the Amtrak, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and NJ Transit train and subway systems that go through Penn Station as plans for an overhaul of the busiest U.S. transit hub come together, he said. Madison Square Garden is required to go back to the commission once renovation plans are 30% complete to make sure the arena remains “appropriately compatible,” Garodnick said.
“All these proposals acknowledge Penn Station and MSG are tightly intertwined and that there’s not been a meaningful proposal for an alternative location for MSG at this time,” he said. “Our consideration for the special permit doesn’t preclude eventually moving the Garden if a proposal does come together.”
The commission’s approval to allow Madison Square Garden to stay in place comes as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently kicked off officially what she described as a design process for the Penn Station project, estimated at $7 billion, that invites competition from architects and engineering firms. The revamp will proceed without relying on funding from office and other nearby commercial development led by Vornado Realty Trust.
ASTM North America, part of global developer ASTM, has put forth a $6 billion proposal for Penn Station that it said presents a more “realistic” and “cost-effective” upgrade than previous concepts.
Some critics of Madison Square Garden have called for the complex to relocate elsewhere to make room for an improved Penn Station. There have also been calls for its tax exemption status to be removed.
The New York City Independent Budget Office said in a report this month that Madison Square Garden, opened at its current location in 1968, has been exempted from paying a total of more than $946.7 million in property taxes, as measured in 2023 dollars, since a 1982 state Legislature decision that exempted the property indefinitely. That amount was based on the Department of Finance’s estimate that the 2023 value of the tax exemption amounted to $42.4 million, the Independent Budget Office said.