Madison Square Garden asks city to let it stay put in perpetuity

The owner of Madison Square Garden, tired of being nudged to move so the arena doesn’t forever entomb Penn Station, has asked the city to let it stay put permanently.

Now Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials must weigh the needs of an arena holding 20,000 Knicks or Rangers fans against the needs of 400,000 daily commuters. It’s one of the most consequential business and urban planning decisions facing the city, and the deadline is seven months away.

MSG last Wednesday filed for a new city-issued permit that allows it to hold big events (its existing permit expires in July). The Garden asked for a permanent extension in 2013, but the city gave it 10 years to find a new location. In the coming weeks Garden management will lobby city officials to let the arena stay put atop the nation’s busiest commuter hub.

Key players in this negotiation will be City Planning Commission Chairman Dan Garodnick, who will recommend how long the permit should last to Rafael Salamanca, chairman of the City Council’s land-use committee.

A new Garden?

MSG owner James Dolan has long said the stadium isn’t going anywhere. Yet there are compelling business reasons for him to build anew nearby. The new Yankee Stadium produces more revenue than the older one across the street and a new MSG would too, even if it’s a few blocks west, near Hudson Yards, where open space awaits and public transportation is also close.

A new Garden next to the Hudson could be a defining part of the skyline.

Adams said, “We’re going to be a hard negotiator for the people of the city, to get the best deal for the people of the city.”

In a statement Wednesday, MSG said “no realistic proposal or financial model for moving the Garden has ever been presented.”

It would be expensive to move the Garden, but keeping a sports arena safely above a railway station isn’t cheap either. The cost of enlarging the Long Island Rail Road corridor in Penn Station cost $600 million because it involved replacing steel beams that support the weight of trucks delivering to the Garden. Also the forest of columns at train level, which support the Garden, gets in the way of basic passenger improvements, such as elevators to tracks.

Perhaps most important from Dolan’s perspective, the Garden needs a spark on the business end. The arena’s seats are full, but MSG Networks is steadily bleeding subscribers and has announced a restructuring plan. The cost of building MSG Sphere, a cutting-edge entertain- ment venue in Las Vegas, is more than $2 billion and rising.

To raise cash, MSG said that it would consider selling minority stakes in the Knicks and Rangers, although Dolan would remain controlling shareholder. A spin-off of

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

MSG Network and other assets is in the works to pay down debt, Garden officials said on a recent earnings call, although again Dolan will remain captain of the ship, no matter how the deck chairs are rearranged. ■