Garden Renovations Come With a Tug of War The $1 billion renovation of Madison Square Garden was unveiled Thursday, and there is much to admire about it, from the shiny lobby with its innovative 600-foot ceiling video screens to the steel-and-concrete bridges built high over the playing surface. But the reality is that even before the last seat was put in place, the Garden had received an eviction notice. In July, the New York City Council voted, 47-1, to let the Garden operate where it is for 10 more years, in hopes that plans will be developed to build a new Pennsylvania Station that doesn't feel like a dungeon. The Garden, understandably, wanted to stay forever. It seems rude to tell a man, in this case James L. Dolan, the executive chairman of the Garden, that after spending $1 billion - raised partly from fans, through higher ticket prices, and from sponsors - his and his arena's presence will be unwelcome past 2023. Perhaps the Council would have been kinder had his reign brought the Knicks and the Rangers more titles rather than widespread angst. But on a day of corporate joy after three years of off-season construction - when Willis Reed, Mark Messier and Walt Frazier lent their luminous pasts to the corporate future - Garden officials refused to discuss the permit or a parallel issue: the property tax exemption the Garden has had since 1982. The city's Independent Budget Office said it was worth $16.5 million in fiscal year 2013 and $17.3 million in fiscal year 2014. "Today is not about the special permit; it's about the transformation," said Hank Ratner, the president of the Garden, who oversaw the construction and whose efforts seemed to bring Dolan close to tears at a news conference. We can talk about that another time. Ratner also did not want to discuss the tax exemption or whether the Garden needed it, what with all the new revenue it will make. "Today is not about the property tax exemption, but I will say we spent $1 billion of our money to transform Madison Square Garden," he said. This is not customary within the world of arenas or stadiums, and it's not customary in this marketplace. A project as complex and grandiose as a new Penn Station will require enormous political will and coordination among the city, state and federal governments. A previous $14 billion plan, which would have moved the Garden one block over, fell apart five years ago amid the recession and a shortfall in public financing. The issue has arisen in the mayoral race. Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee, who has a huge lead in the polls, allied himself with prominent civic groups in a campaign to deny the Garden a long-term permit. On his campaign Web site, de Blasio said that turning Penn Station into the "transit hub that will meet the city's future transportation needs" would be impossible as long as Madison Square Garden was sitting on top of it. Mitchell Moss, a New York University professor of urban policy and planning, said there was a "simple solution" for the Garden: swap the property tax exemption for an extension of the permit. "The solution is not an architectural one but a financial one," he said. He added: "The days of wine and roses are over. New York City is entering a new phase. There will be more of a focus on social policies than physical infrastructure, so it's hard to believe that a massive new Penn Station will be a priority. The focus should be on completing the Second Avenue subway and the extension of the 7 line. It would be astonishing to watch workers take apart the Garden in 10 years. It wouldn't be like lopping off an extra floor of a building that violated zoning ordinances. Can you imagine a future mayor declaring, "Tear down that arena, Mr. Dolan"? Consider what it would entail. The renovation project used 2,851 tons of steel. Concourses were widened. The Seventh Avenue lobby, which used to feel like a threadbare adjunct to Penn Station, has tripled in size and has been named Chase Square. Restrooms were added, and the quality of the food offerings has been elevated to edible and maybe somewhat better. Luxury boxes were added and overhauled. And then there are those two 330-ton bridges that run east to west and are also named for Chase, which seems to have paid enough to be a Garden sponsor to have the arena named for itself. The carpeted bridges are 233-foot-long, 22-foot-wide revenue producers. They have 430 seats (some of them tiny swiveling stools) that sell for $110 to $210 each. Another 120 seats in those upper reaches - about 50 feet from the ice or court - are for members of the news media, mostly those journalists who cover hockey, but also for some basketball writers. If you're Dolan, you fight as hard to keep the Garden from being torn down as you did a decade ago to stop plans for a West Side stadium for the 2012 Summer Olympics and the Jets. And maybe your teams win a championship or two.