What we see here is a rendering for an office tower that may yet rise atop the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Brief backgrounder: back in 1999, the Port Authority chose Vornado and the Lawrence Rubin Company to develop a tower above the terminal. The plan faltered post-9/11. Now, the Port Authority will negotiate exclusively with—er, Vornado and the Lawrence Rubin Company—for the right to build the thing after all.
There remains one pressing question: what does this mean for professors at Amherst? We're glad you asked:
Some skeptics point to a loss in the neighborhood's resurgence. "The new tower will signify how Times Square has lost its mixed-class atmosphere," a professor of architecture and history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Max Page, said. "No one should long for seediness and drug-dealing and crime, but there was a wider range of amusements and appeal to a wider range of people. Now it's an-upper middle-class place."· Gleaming Office Tower May Rise on Symbol of Urban Decay [NYSun]
· Port Authority is Reviving Plans for Bus Station Tower [NYTimes]