Community Board 5 voted 36 to 1 against a plan by Vornado Realty Trust to redevelop the 22-story Hotel Pennyslvania on Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets.

The company is seeking city approvals to building a 1,190-foot-high office tower designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli, who designed 1 Beacon Court on Lexington Avenue for Vornado, on the site in exchange for making significant transit improvements including opening an underground passageway between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

In late 2007, Merrill Lynch selected Vornado and its site for a new world headquarters but a recent article at observer.com by Eliot Brown noted that "just days later, preoccupied with $7.9 billion in write-downs, Merrill's board held off on voting on the headquarters plan."

The tower would contain about 2 million square feet of commercial space including trading floors. According to the article, Vornado has told the commission that if it does not get the approvals needed for the project, it would proceed with an "as-of-right" commercial tower of about 1.15 million square feet.

Vornado has been acquiring land in the vicinity of the old Pennsylvania Station for several years and had hoped to be able to use all of its unused air-rights to build at least one very major skyscraper on the existing site of Madison Square Garden, which it did not own. The owner of the garden, however, recently decided against selling and moving the area to the James A. Farley Post Office Building one block to the west.

The original Pennsylvania Station was designed by McKim Mead & White and was widely recognized as one of the city's greatest Beaux-Arts buildings. Its demolition in 1964 led to the belated creation of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania was erected in 1919 directly across Seventh Avenue from the famous train station and was also designed by McKim Mead & White. At one time, the hotel said it was the world's largest.

The plan to relocate Madison Square Garden and build a new train station and demolish the Hotel Pennsylvania were a central part of much larger plans by the city to significantly redevelop much of southwest midtown Manhattan, a plan that involved an expansion of the Javits Convention Center, the creation of a major new angled boulevard between 42nd and 34th Streets to be known as Hudson Yards, and the creation of a major new residential and office complex on platforms over the east and west train yards between 30th and 33rd Streets east of 10th Avenue, and an extension to the west of the 7 subway line.

The Hotel Pennsylvania is one of the last surviving examples of very large hotels in the city built to accommodate train travelers.

The hotel, whose address is 401 Seventh Avenue, was erected by the Pennsylvania Railroad and was operated by Ellsworth Statler and was acquired by the Hotels Statler Company in 1949. After all 17 Statler hotels were acquired by Conrad Hilton in 1954, it became The Statler Hilton. In the early 1980s, Hilton sold the property and it became the New York Statler again. In 1984, it was acquired by the Penta chain and became the New York Penta. In 1992, it reverted to the Hotel Pennsylvania.

The hotel's telephone number, Pennsylvania 6-5000 is supposedly the New York City telephone number in longest continuous use and was famous as the name of a song by the Glenn Miller band.

The local community board previously had voted that to recommend that the hotel be designated an official city landmark but in February, 2008, however, a spokesman for the landmarks commission confirmed that the agency had decided not to hold a hearing on its possible designation.

The Community Board's vote last night came after several speakers representing the Durst Organization, Madison Square Garden, the Regional Plan Association and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign spoke in support of the Vornado plan.