Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Back with us now is Kathryn Garcia. As some of you remember, she was one of the three finalists who all came in really close to each other in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York last year. It was Eric Adams, Maya Wiley, and Kathryn Garcia down to the wire there, remember in the rank choice voting system that was in effect for the first time in a mayoral election.

As some of you also remember, she got that far largely on her reputation for being a really good manager and problem solver under Mayor de Blasio as sanitation commissioner. Then when de Blasio needed a crack troubleshoot at the highest levels, the person who oversaw the effort of turning around conditions in NYCHA apartments, and then became the city's foods czar, so called, when the pandemic hit, and so many people faced hunger in the first wave of massive unemployment that shook the city, they turned to Kathryn Garcia.

Now, in case you didn't know, Kathryn Garcia is working for Governor Hochul in the high-level position of director of state operations. She joins us today mostly to talk about the plan for renovating Penn Station, which is nearing some decision points and is the subject of controversy. We'll talk about that and maybe more. Director Garcia, great to have you on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Kathryn Garcia: Oh, I'm thrilled to be on, Brian. It's great to talk to you again.

Brian Lehrer: You had a Daily News op-ed on this, which some of our listeners may have seen, which states near the top that Penn Station today is unique but for all the wrong reasons. What are those wrong reasons?

Kathryn Garcia: It's unique. It's the largest rail site in the country, but it also is a rabbit warren of tunnels and small spaces, really difficult to get around, a very uninviting environment. We want to make sure that we are putting forward a plan that really is going to make it so people want to be taking mass transit and coming into the most glorious station in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Is it not like that in other cities? Any in particular that you want to cite as models as opposed to these, as you were describing them, low-ceilinged warrens that look like you're in [unintelligible 00:02:35] more than you're in a glorious station like Grand Central Terminal might strike people?

Kathryn Garcia: We don't have to look far. We can just look across the street at Moynihan or we can look at Grand Central, but if you think about our nation's capital and Union Street station and what that's done for the surrounding community. We know that the future of cities means that we need to have great transportation that is sustainable and that we need to have our jobs near our transportation hubs.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. Governor Hochul released a plan for transforming Penn Station. Everybody wants to transform Penn Station, but this one remains controversial, and we'll get into why. Wasn't there one already in place? That's what some of our listeners may be thinking right now, like, "Haven't we been talking about a new Penn Station for years and there was a design and Governor Cuomo touted the design, did the design, and now we're talking about a new plan coming from Governor Hochul." Wasn't this already in the works in some way?

Kathryn Garcia: Oh, I think that people are confusing the Amtrak customers got the new Moynihan station. Many of their customers go through that terminal rather than through the current Penn Station. This design is really focused on both our Long Island Rail Road customers, our subway customers as well as New Jersey Transit, our neighbors across the river who have not gotten a grand train hall or an easy way to move through. The Governor Hochul feels a real sense of urgency about now is the time. Now is the time to make it so that we are creating an environment that really works for the hundreds of thousands of people that move through that station every day.

Brian Lehrer: Where it gets controversial is around office tower development that is part of the plan, including part of the funding mechanism. You acknowledge this controversy. Can you describe that part of the plan and how you understand the objections of the critics?

Kathryn Garcia: Sure. This is going to be a very, very expensive undertaking as you can imagine. The station itself has three different tenants and really a massive amount of infrastructure, and we anticipate that the price tag for the rehabilitation of Penn Station is going to cost somewhere about $7 billion, but it will bring such value to the neighborhood to have that as its centerpiece, that we want to capture some of that value and have people who own property around there have to pay for some of what is done so it doesn't fall on taxpayers and on people who pay fares.

I think that change is difficult. Anytime you're talking about real change in a neighborhood, there are people who are not really enthused about that, but things do change in all neighborhoods in New York City, certainly in my 50-plus years here. I'm not living in the same place that I was when I was a child.

This is a balanced approach to make sure that we're not overburdening our taxpayers and our fare payers and that we really get to see a beautiful train hall put together that will make it so that there are more entrances into the subway, into the train station itself that will be one easier to get through and also just plain safer. I don't know if you've been down there in the crowds of rush hour, but it can get pretty tight.

Brian Lehrer: Only a million times, with a lot of family members in Queens and on Long Island. 212-433-WNYC is our phone number, folks, for anybody. I know some of you have very strong opinions on this who want to weigh in on Governor Hochul's design for a new Penn Station and the developments around it. Or if you have a question for Kathryn Garcia, the director of state operations under Governor Hochul, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @brianlehrer.

An article in Crain's over the weekend, and Crain's obviously is not some NIMBY publication that's anti-development, this is the business news organization of New York, for people who don't know Crain's. An article there was called Hochul's Plan for Penn Station Could Cost Taxpayers City Agency Says. Let me read the beginning of the article. It says, "New York City taxpayers coughed up nearly $400 million to Wall Street bond holders after property tax and other revenues at Hudson Yards didn't meet targets. Governor Hochul could be setting up a repeat of that scenario with a plan to use the revenues from 10 new office towers to pay for rebuilding Penn station."

It says, "That's the conclusion of the city's independent budget office, which in a report Monday said there are significant unanswered questions about Penn Station, starting with how much the project will cost and how much revenue will be needed." That's in Crain's, Director Garcia, and that's citing the mainstream establishment organization, the independent budget office, which says, Hudson Yards fell short of projections for revenue because they didn't fill up the office towers like the anticipated, so they're raising the question, why would this be any different?

Kathryn Garcia: Let's just make sure that we're really clear. Hudson Yards has actually been extraordinarily successful for the City of New York in terms of its property taxes and it wasn't office employment that suffered in the early years, there was the downturn of the financial crisis. The city fronted some of the money during that period of time, but has since made it back and has since made hundreds of millions of dollars more off of Hudson Yards. It is not something that we want to replay necessarily, but this is why you have to have a long-term plan.

The early years were challenging, but have more than made up for them. We all should have gotten that rate of return on our investments. It was also about making the financial commitment, particularly for the extension of the 7 Line, because when you have transportation and can easily get not only office workers, but shoppers and tourists back and forth to sites, it makes them far more valuable. The city has actually reaped quite a few benefits from that plan.

Brian Lehrer: On the office occupancy aspect, as we're transforming to apparently a more permanent hybrid office economy, which the Governor acknowledges, how confident are you that plans for this much new office tower will wind up paying for itself with tenants? The governor is talking at the same time about converting unused office buildings that already exist to residential use.

Kathryn Garcia: What we're seeing in the city right now is a real flight to quality. You see buildings that have a lot of, for example, tech infrastructure in them being where tenants want to go. We are seeing that there are much higher vacancies in what is called the B and C office tower, which are much riper for conversion to residential. We know that when we have a livable city, when we have employees who want to live here, then they want to work here.

There's going to be hybrid work that happens going forward, but that's going to happen internationally and we want to make sure we are still being competitive on the international stage, whether that's in Asia or in Europe, because we want to keep the jobs here that are the most valuable jobs across the world.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Dale in Manhattan, who says they're an architect. I don't know from the name Dale whether this is man, woman, non-binary. Dale, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Dale: Thank you. Good morning. I am trained as an architect. I have two architecture degrees, I also teach architecture, and I care deeply, after 22 years of living in New York, about New York. This project, while Penn Station has needed to be redone for many years, it is not insignificant that they're choosing to tear down historic structures in a neighborhood and a building that actually created the landmark commission because of the original structure being torn down.

A couple of things, first of all, why would we continue to tear down historic buildings in Midtown and lose the embodied carbon, let alone the fabric of New York City? How many buildings can we continue to tear down in Midtown Manhattan and still be considered New York and not Tokyo?

Then lastly, there's a part of understanding just in terms of green understanding the carbon and what we do when we tear down buildings and we create new buildings, tearing down 12 city blocks of New York, which is an insane notion on my idea, but nevertheless, when you tear down that, you're also tearing down all the embodied carbon, which means when you take out the brick, the concrete, and the steel that exists, you are losing all of that structure for I think the failure of imagination and then you have to build new. It just adds to our carbon footprint in a city where we need to actually change [unintelligible 00:12:47] take the rest of it off the air.

I do really feel passionately that this is a project with a failure of imagination. It seems like it has been done mostly for real estate purposes. If we need to pay for a new Penn Station, we need to pay for a new Penn Station, but we shouldn't destroy a neighborhood in order to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Dale, thank you very much for your call. There's a different concern than I think we mostly hear about, which is mostly about the new buildings that would go up and what they would be, what kind of affordable housing would or wouldn't be there, and whether we need all that new office space. Dale's concerned about the buildings that would come down. What would you say to Dale?

Kathryn Garcia: Oh, Dale, thank you so much for calling in. Obviously, many of you on the radio today know how important sustainability is both for me personally as well as for Governor Hochul. We also know that density in office buildings is more sustainable than having people spread out, that you can have very efficient buildings and we don't have right now around Penn Station for anyone who's walked around Penn Station.

They, for the most part, have not been designated as historic preservation sites, which obviously any building in the city of New York could be eligible for. This is actually something we are going to be doing in partnership with the city, which is why we've put together a public realm task force, why we're adding eight acres of green space, because that's actually for anyone who is around that area, there is actually no green space as far as I've ever seen, to make it something that's more inviting that we want to bring people to.

Looking at how we do that from a sustainability point of view is something that this governor is very interested in and has been at the forefront of since our first weeks in office during climate week last October.

Brian Lehrer: Few minutes left with Kathryn Garcia, now the director of state operations for Governor Hochul, here to talk on behalf of the governor's Penn Station renovation proposal. Let me ask you about the housing piece which had come up in a segment last week on the show in a critical way. I guess there's some housing in the buildings that would go up and people have expressed criticism that there wouldn't be much affordable housing there. In terms of housing, that should be job number one for the city right now for any new things that go up that is below market-rate housing. How would you describe that piece?

Kathryn Garcia: The Governor listened to the more than 100 public meetings that occurred, and we did add more housing to the plan, nearly 1800 new residential units of, which 500 would be affordable. Residential does not create as much value as office towers do in order to have us fund Penn Station, which is the real driver here, is how do we get a new Penn Station? We want to make sure that there is the ability to have community.

If you think about the future of cities, the future of cities has to be you put jobs where transportation is so that we can continue to grow and be at the cutting edge, whether or not that's technology or biolife sciences or financial services or technology. I think that in order for us to be at the forefront, we need to have jobs where our transportation infrastructure is.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more. Of course, this is the way-- Not to misrepresent what the callers mean. I guess when you do a segment like this, it's the critics who call in. It's not the people to call in and say, "I love this plan." Usually, the people who are motivated to call in are the critics of one thing or another, and right now it's Penn Station as reimagined by Governor Hochul, represented here by Kathryn Garcia. We will take one more critic of the design, and that is Sam in Leonardo, New Jersey from a group called Rethink Penn NYC. Sam you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sam: Yes, thank you. I just like to explore something good you said, which, if I understood it correctly, suggested that the taxpayers and commuters should be protected and will benefit from this funding by creating these super tools. If this was done properly, and I don't think it is being done properly, there would be regionwide benefits. Why shouldn't we be spreading the cost of this throughout the region and perhaps even at a certain level with the fare payers instead of disproportionally putting so much of this on the backs of the surrounding community?

We are going to be destroying desperately needed affordable housing, small businesses, a lot of them in class B and C office space, and these historic buildings that you may be giving short [unintelligible 00:18:03] to. Frankly, the 21st-century employers like Google and Facebook love the old buildings. In fact, Google's down at the St John's Terminal market, which is fairly walking distance to Penn Station.

This idea that we have to build national a national line of super tools around Penn Station otherwise we're not going to survive as a city I would challenge, and I really challenge the equities of this. Why aren't we spreading the costs more fairly across the region and the people that are directly using the station instead of chloroforming neighborhood?

Brian Lehrer: Sam, thank you, director Garcia.

Kathryn Garcia: Thank you, Sam, for that. Yes, St. John's is a fabulous site that's being done by Google, but I would say the only thing that's really left is the façade because in order to have modern offices you need to have modern infrastructure, and ensuring that we have modern infrastructure is what we're doing. We are looking at all funding sources. This is also a moment when we have infrastructure money coming out of the federal government that we need to access now before there's a political change.

There's not only these buildings, but that's just the share that we're trying to keep off the backs of our taxpayers. We're also looking for federal money to make sure that that is put into the pot here for all of the pieces of this that need to happen at Penn Station for its rehab and for its expansion.

Brian Lehrer: Sam mentioned the displacement of people who live there now. Do you have any numbers on how many residents of that area will be displaced as those buildings come down, and talk about what plans you have? When people bring up this kind of thing, we think about the horrors of the Cross Bronx expressway and some of the other road construction from once upon a time in New York City, where mostly lower-income people got displaced and not sufficiently replaced, or meaning put in other places. What do you have in mind and how many people will that effect?

Kathryn Garcia: Sure. Just in the block south of Penn Station, which has the majority of residential in that area, there is actually not very much residential in that area. We intend to make sure that there's at least 162 permanently affordable units, more than the entire number that's there. When you think about what we're doing, we're actually adding hundreds of units of residential compared to what's currently in any of those buildings today. Everyone who is there will have a right of return. We do not want to push people out of their neighborhoods, we want to make sure that they can stay there as it grows and changes.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote near the end of your Daily News op-ed, "When it comes to Penn, New Yorkers have been sold the bill of good so many times they've lost faith that anything meaningful will ever happen. I disagree. I think we deserve it and we can have nice things." We will see if this goes forward. Who decides? Since the opposition is active right now and we're getting criticism, even from the independent budget office, like I cited before from Crain's. Who makes the final decision and how and when?

Kathryn Garcia: It goes through several different levels through the States Economic Development Agency. There are two-step process there. Then there's the legislative process with the public authorities approvals as well. Those should occur over the course of the summer.

Brian Lehrer: All right. This is news right now, over the course of the summer is the time that it looks like there will be final public input and final decision made on this. Before you go, do you want to say anything? Maybe you don't want to say anything, which is fine, but do you want to say anything as close as you came to becoming mayor last year about how you think the city is doing or about how you think Mayor Adams is doing?

Kathryn Garcia: Look, I'm super thrilled to be working for Governor Hochul. One door closes and another one opens.

Brian Lehrer: Kathryn Garcia now director of state operations in the Hochul administration. Thanks for coming on back on with us. We always appreciate it.

Kathryn Garcia: Take care. Thank you.

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