MOYNIHAN'S DREAM, Penn Station solution, Corporation was created to buy and renovate landmark postal facility for use as a train station: [CITY Edition]

The train station started with a dream. U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had for years fantasized about moving Pennsylvania Station into the landmark post office across Eighth Avenue as a way to remedy the destruction of the original rail station in the 1960s.

But buying and renovating the two-block long James A. Farley postal facility would take hundreds of millions of dollars and require close cooperation among different government entities.

The solution: a public authority. On Aug. 31, 1995, the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corp. was established as part of the Empire State Development Corp., one of the more than 700 authorities in New York State.

"It needed the focus," said Alexandros E. Washburn, an architect and former Moynihan aide who was the corporation's first president. "It's the most flexible public entity - an organization...