JamesRR wrote:EuroStar wrote:Unfortunately I do not see the Garden moving any time soon as the public is unlikely to swallow the cost of paying off the current owners. The most we can hope is for the theater under the main Garden to be removed. That would actually allow for a decent amount of light and free quite a bit of space for reconfiguration of the concourses. For reasons beyond my knowledge though, the proposed redesign (covering existing Penn and the post office) that won Cuomo's competition does not include the removal of the theater.
This is a very good - and often overlooked - point. The Garden arena itself sits quite a few levels above the street, and Penn's concourses below. It's the Theater that's sandwiched OVER the main concourse level and UNDER the west end of the Garden. Removing this would allow a huge improvement to be made in terms of getting ceiling space and light in the facility.
The bigger problem is that even the current floor size of the main concourse is inadequate to handle the volume of people moving through. The entire level needs to be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch to truly meet the needs of today's demands.
That removal of the theater was dropped so early on and hasn't been mentioned since makes me speculate that MSG and the state may be quietly working out a plan for a new stadium. If the facility is to be replaced whole-hog over the next 15 years, then removal of the theater would certainly make little sense. Of course, it could be that the Dolans prevailed over the Cuomo administration and neither a new stadium nor the theater removal are happening, but I would like to believe the state is not that apathetic to the glaring need to open up more circulation space.
I personally don't understand why most concepts for a new MSG keep the new venue in Manhattan. Even in its central location, my understanding is that most MSG audience members do not use mass transit to reach it. Certainly, the performers and teams aren't using the subways or rail to access the site. The Citi Field area, OTOH, has better highway access than Manhattan, good-enough transit options and enough underutilized space to fit another MSG-sized facility, leaving the Penn Station block free for a proper train hall and other enterprises that will achieve a far better symbiosis with Penn Station than we have today.