Fortune Travels: Day Tripping: OHNY

For some reason, I am usually out of town for Open House New York. It's the one weekend chock full of behind the scenes (and not so behind the scenes) tours of places throughout the city. This year I was around, so 5 and I got tickets to tour 7 World Trade and the future Moynihan Station in the current Farley Post Office building at 34th Street.

7 WTC was the first tower rebuilt at the World Trade Center site post-9/11 (opened in 2006). The building is 52 stories and houses a ConEd power substation. It is a certified green building and has enhanced safety construction (lessons learned from 9/11, I suppose.) I have to say, the view from the 48th floor was amazing. Granted, the southern view was of the 9/11 Memorial (sad), but the other views were pretty damn awesome. I was also very jealous of the fancy conference room up there. The ones at my work don't even have windows. At all.

North view from 7 WTC

e+5

5 at 7 WTC with 1 WTC behind him

9/11 Memorial

Taking charge in a conference room at 7 WTC

Moynihan Station will hopefully be the west side counterpart to Grand Central Station. There are high hopes that it will outshine the strangely smelling hellish commuting mecca that is Penn Station. Construction has not begun, but Phase 1 will take at least four years to extend the rails from Penn Station through the Farley Post Office Building. The budget for Phase 1 is $267 million. Yikes. One of the obstacles the project has faced is having so many stakeholders to placate: NYC, New York state, and federal levels, as well as the Post Office and many trains (Amtrak, LIRR, NJ Transit). Oh, and the Farley Building is landmarked, which limits the type of contruction for some parts of the buildling, and contruction can only take place at night and on weekends since train service cannot be disrupted.

I will be very curious to see how this turns out. It is possible that I will be pretty old by then.