The MTA says a proposal by US Rep. Carolyn Maloney to rename the 77th St.-Lexington Avenue subway stop after former Mayor Ed Koch isn’t leaving the station.
“We do not rename subway stations after people,” said MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg today.
That didn’t stop Maloney from holding a press conference a few hours later to demand the MTA change its policy.
“Mayor Koch was the quintessential New Yorker, a man who restored the city’s luster after the difficult financial decade that preceded his mayorality,” Maloney says in a letter to acting MTA chairman Fernando Ferrer and MTA president Thomas Prendergast.
“New Yorkers owe Mayor Koch a debt of gratitude for all that he did for New York. I urge you to find some way to recognize him at the subway station at 77th and Lexington Ave, his favorite subway station.”
Maloney aide Jacob Tugendrajach had earlier told The Post that the renaming was “a done deal” and a press conference was to be held to announce the re-naming of the station.
By this afternoon, Maloney’s office said its back-up plan may include putting up a plaque at the station to memorialize Koch.
But the MTA said that idea is also a no-go.
“We don’t do plaques at subway stations, either,” Lisberg said, adding that stations are only named after geographic locations nearby or when naming rights are secured by a corporate sponsor whose location is near a station, such as the Barclays Center stop outside the Barclays Center at Atlantic Avenue.
Barclays wil pay $200,000 a year for 20 years to secure that naming right, the MTA said.