Newark Penn Station Rehabilitation and Modernization Program

Newark Penn Station moves more than a hundred thousand people a day through a building that has not had a real overhaul since it opened in 1935. NJ TRANSIT is spending $190 million to fix that without closing the doors. The station, designed by McKim, Mead & White for the Pennsylvania Railroad and listed on both the State and National Registers of Historic Places, is one of the few places in the country where commuter rail, intercity rail, light rail, PATH, and intercity bus all land under one roof.

Project Scope

The program splits into $30 million of immediate work and $160 million of longer-term capital improvements. Near-term scope covers interior and exterior wall cleaning, restoration of the original Pennsylvania Railroad wooden benches, lighting replacement, historic stairwell tile restoration, rebuilt restrooms, and air curtains at the entrances. The longer-term package is heavier: full restoration of the grand waiting room, reworked entranceways, two additional platform elevators, renewed escalators, new platform doors, a replacement public address and customer information system, and new retail and dining. Parsons Transportation Group holds a $9.2 million professional services contract for master planning and design, with Grimshaw on architecture and Steer on transit planning. PACO Group is running construction management. G&M Eastern Contracting took the first construction package, a $3 million award covering roofing, drainage and platform masonry.

Why It Matters

Phased work in an occupied terminal is harder than a rebuild, and the historic listing means the waiting room finishes can’t simply be replaced with new ones. The benches are being restored rather than swapped. That is the part of this job that will take the longest and show up least in the budget. The elevators and escalators are the operational story: two more platform elevators in a station this dense changes how the building performs on a bad-weather morning more than any finish work will.

Project Team & Details