MTA Closes on Hudson Yards Lease

West Side Yard is a 30-track LIRR rail yard just outside of Penn Station that is used to store trains before or after they finish a run at Penn Station.  West Side Yard is in a wonderful location because it allows the LIRR to send trains that terminate at Penn Station to there instead of wasting a tunnel slot deadheading an empty equipment train all the way out to another yard out east.

As you might be able to pick up from it's name, West Side Yard is located on the West Side of Manhattan, between 30th and 33rd Streets and 10th and 12th Avenues (map).

Here are some photos from Wikimedia Commons of West Side Yard:

West Side Yard is generally pretty much full during weekdays (especially between rush hours) with 29 or 30 trains taking up just about all of the track slots there.

But it's interesting to note that West Side Yard is one of the few small plots of land left in Midtown Manhattan without a skyscraper or big apartment building on top of it.

Well, that's about to change.

Earlier this week, the MTA closed on a lease that would allow two companies, Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group, cover over and develop on top of the West Side Yard/Hudson Yards site.  They're not getting rid of any of the tracks in West Side Yard--the LIRR would never let that happen, but they are going to build this huge platform over the yard and then build buildings over that.

The new buildings would sit on this 26-acre site and would include over 13 million square feet of new floorspace for offices, retail stores, hotels, apartment buildings, et cetera.

But the MTA's not letting them do this for free, right?  Of course not!  Related and Oxford companies are going to be paying a whole boatload of money for their new 99-year lease on the land.  How much are they going to pay?

$1 billion!

One billion dollars is a very nice chunk of change that the MTA is going to put into its Capital Program.  No, this money's not going to the LIRR, or to lower any fares or anything like that, but the money will go towards the construction the East Side Access Project, the Second Avenue Subway, the 7 extension to this very area (Hudson Yards), et cetera.

Now, $1 billion is just a tiny drop in the bucket when you think about how much money the MTA takes in and spits out on any given day.  Heck, I'm sure they make $1 billion in a couple hours collecting tolls at the Verrazano Bridge.  But it does help.

The development companies have said that they won't be disrupting LIRR operations at all into and out of the yard during or after construction, and yard capacity won't be reduced at any point either.  So it's a win-win for the MTA.  More money, and no loss of space for the LIRR.