ALBANY – In his first major break with Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Paterson said yesterday the stalled Moynihan Station project should be turned over to the Port Authority.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Paterson said. “The Port Authority is the area’s transportation vehicle. The Moynihan Station is a transportation project.”
The governor’s remarks came just two days after Bloomberg angrily dismissed talk of a PA takeover as a “terrible idea,” potentially setting up yet another development showdown between Albany and City Hall.
Speaking in the city, Bloomberg – whom state Republicans are urging to run for governor – took a shot at Paterson, saying the governor wanted to “study things” and blaming the delays in important city projects on “chaos in Albany.”
The mayor warned that further retooling could only further delay projects, such as the mayor’s foundering effort to get development at the West Side rail yards started before his term expires on Dec. 31, 2009.
“It got slowed down because of Albany,” Bloomberg said.
“The chaos in Albany was not good for us. A new administration comes in. They want to study things. Then there’s another new administration. They want to study things.”
Sen. Charles Schumer also favors the PA plan as a way to jump-start the $14 billion Moynihan project after the owners of Madison Square Garden pulled out of plans to build a new arena on the station site.
Schumer argues that the PA – flush with $5 billion in new transportation funds from its recent toll increase – stands as the only entity with the means to complete the new transit hub over Penn Station.
The Empire State Development Corp. currently controls the Moynihan Station plan.
Bloomberg and some state lawmakers fear the PA handoff could weaken their control over the project because the agency answers to the governors of New York and New Jersey, rather than local officials.
The mayor also cited delays in the PA’s efforts to rebuild at Ground Zero.
“We certainly would never agree to the Port Authority being in charge of it because they can’t get done what they have to do downtown,” he said.
Paterson said he would take Bloomberg’s opposition “into account.”
“This isn’t a personal feud, or something like that. He just has a viewpoint on what was Schumer’s proposal and one that I’ll weigh as I make a decision,” the governor said.
Paterson has shown an increasing willingness to wade into the struggling megaprojects he inherited two months ago when former Gov. Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign amid a hooker scandal.
Paterson said he might charge a czar or committee to coordinate developments at Penn Station, as well as the Javits Center, lower Manhattan and the West Side rail yards.
He also might put the ESDC’s chairman on the PA’s oversight board, a practice Spitzer ended.
Additional reporting by David Seifman and Tom Topousis.