The zoning and franchise subcommittee of the land-use committee of the City Council held a hearing yesterday on several applications by Vornado Realty Trust for zoning variances to permit it to erect an office tower nearly twice as tall as current zoning allows on the site of the Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets.

The 22-story hotel was designed by McKim, Mead & White to be compatible with the firm's fabled Pennsylvania Station across the avenue that was demolished in the 1960s.

Vornado's proposed tower, which is known as 15 Penn Plaza, would rise about 1,200 feet, about the height of the Empire State Building without its spire 900 feet to the east. In exchange for the major zoning changes for its projects, Vornado is offering to make about $100 million in improvements to local subway stations including a reopening of the former "Gimbel's Passageway" to the Avenue of the Americas.

Vornado, a major owner of real estate in the area, also argues that its project would provide jobs although it has not committed to going forward until it has a major tenant.

The Vornado proposal has been bitterly opposed by Anthony Malkin, president of the company that owns the Empire State Building on the grounds that it would "crowd" his building and block many views of it from the west. He took out a full-page advertisement in yesterday's edition of The New York Times in which he said his building "is THE iconic image of New York City's skyline" and that "The City Planning Commission itself has held that a certain standard must be met in exchange for great height," adding that "Less than one year ago a tower had 200 feet of height removed by the Commission because it did not belong '...in the zone of the Empire State Building's iconic spire.'"

According to an article today in Architects Newspaper by Matt Chaban, Vornado released a rendering, shown at the right, that showed its proposed tower, the Empire State Building and the Hudson Yards proposal "to make the case that it is not the only project reshaping lower Midtown.

David Greenbaum, the president of Vornado, told the subcommittee that "New York as a city has to grow," the article said.

Mr. Malkin, the article continued, told the subcommittee that Vornado could achieve its goals with a shorter tower with setbacks, something in the 800- to 850-foot range.

The subcommittee members expressed considerable ambivalence about the project, wary about its size and impact on the skyline, but also noting the need to remain competitive with other financial centers around the world.

Leroy Comrie, the influential Queens councilman who chairs the Land-Use Committee, told Mr. Malkin that "You're asking us to look at many things beyond this one project." The article said that "His tone was severe, suggesting at once that such a policy was needed, but also that he was neither prepared nor even interested in formulating it at this point."

In an article in today's edition of The New York Times, Charles V. Bagli wrote that Councilman Comrie "posed a final question...that seemed to foretell how he would vote: 'Is New York City a snapshot taken in 2010 to be held in perpetuity, or is New York City an evolving, dynamic entity?"

An editorial in today's edition of The New York Post said "Should the New York City skyline be forever - like a bug cast in amber? Of course not"

An editorial in today's edition of The New York Daily News said that "since the invention of the electric elevator..., the city's silhouette has been made and remade, with buildings gaining dominance only to be overshadowed with the ascent of new attention-getters," adding "so it is today, even for the grand old marvel of the Empire State."