ESDC's Gargano losing patience with Moynihan Station detractors.

Uncertainty continues to surround the plan to convert the Farley Post Office into an extension of Penn Station after it was struck down by a powerful state oversight agency last month.

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver used his vote on the Public Authorities Control Board, whose approval is necessary for the project to receive a critical portion of state funding, to reject the roughly $800 million plan in favor of a more sweeping redevelopment of Manhattan's busiest transportation hub.

The project's developers, a partnership between Vornado and The Related Companies, had quietly circulated that overarching plan in recent months, which included not only the construction of the new extension across Eighth Avenue, but also a major renovation of Penn Station, relocation of Madison Square Garden to the Farley Building, and construction of office towers on and around the current MSG site. But weeks after the PACB vote, there are now questions over just when that grander vision will be formalized into a concrete plan, when it will be submitted for state approval, how much it will cost, how much taxpayer money it will require, and even if it is certain that Vornado and Related will be able to remain on as the developers.

State economic officials say that while the bigger plan's significant complexities are hashed out, federal funding for the project along with a critical deal in which the state had arranged to purchase the Farley Building from the United States Postal Service are meanwhile hanging precariously in the balance.

Just how the project will progress going forward remains hazy, but officials have become increasingly clear why a plan whose approval seemed all but certain at the end of the summer has run into so much opposition.

"The rejection of that project is mind boggling, there was no sound reason other than the possible reasons of protecting or helping MSG, I know that's a pretty bold statement, but it's a reality," said Charles Gargano, Chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, which put together the plan to convert the Farley building into the extension to be called Moynihan Station. "We never heard opposition to the project, but all of sudden MSG comes into the picture."

"We do know some of the relations between MSG and Speaker Silver."

Gargano was referring to MSG's hiring of lobbyist Patricia Lynch, a former chief of staff for Silver, which prompted wide speculation that MSG had influenced Silver's stance on the project.

Silver of course has dismissed suggestions that his vote against the project was cast as a favor to the Dolan family, which owns MSG along with Cablevision, the Knicks and the Rangers and who have a reputation for strong arming opponents.

In the summer of 2005, for instance, they were influential in scuttling plans for a Jets football stadium on the far West Side. That project also was crushed by a vote of rejection by Silver at a PACB meeting.

Silver has been insistent that the reasons for his objections have been that the overarching project was the one presented to him by the developers and that he couldn't approve a portion of that plan--Moynihan Station --without being able to fully analyze such things as the larger plan's financing and environmental impacts. "The comments that were made by Speaker Silver 'well this is not the project that the developers want to build' what does that mean, what the hell does that mean?" Gargano said, dismissing the validity of Silver's stance.

"Who's in charge here, the developers or the public sector? This is an absolute joke to me and this agency."