Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, the developers of a long-planned expansion of Pennsylvania Station into neighboring James A. Farley Post Office, have told government officials that they’re struggling to make the terms of their five-year-old deal work, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to a timetable laid out last year, final terms of their financial agreement are to be solidified with the state by the end of this year.
In 2006, the developers agreed to pay more than $310 million for rights to develop retail in the rear of the building, but now they’re seeing that the building needs to be more mixed-use, the Journal said.
In recent months, they’ve approached the City University of New York to see if it might be interested in a small campus in the back of the building as part of a land swap plan with the Tribeca-based Borough of Manhattan Community College, but CUNY officials did not bite. [more]

Speaker Christine Quinn (center) will push harder to redevelop Farley
Post Office (left) to replace Penn Station which she compared
unfavorably to Union Station in D.C. (right)

City Council speaker Christine Quinn told contractors and builders at a
morning breakfast today that the Moynihan Station planners need to
consider smaller or staggered plans, despite the fact that Pennsylvania
Station is an eyesore. “At this point we need to come up with a plan even if it is smaller or
phased in,” for the project located in her city council district, she
said. Quinn was speaking to members of the New York Building Congress at its
industry breakfast forum at the Hilton New York Hotel in Midtown today. The Moynihan Station plan envisions converting the James A. Farley Post
Office on Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street to a rail transit hub, part of
a wider vision to transform the Penn Station area, with a new Madison
Square Garden structure and office towers. [more]