Moynihan Train Hall czar killed himself as pressure mounted for Cuomo’s jewel project

In the days before he hanged himself, it was the clock that kept Michael Evans up at night.

President of the public-private consortium, Moynihan Station Development Corp., Evans, 40, had already spent the better part of his professional career working on the conversion of the James A. Farley Post Office into the gleaming, light-filled $1.6 billion train hall at Penn Station, which opened Jan. 1.

The Art Deco clock, which is suspended from the center of the 255,000-square-foot waiting area for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road, was not part of the original renderings for the station. Evans, a handsome Oxford grad who was passionate about public service, was forced to scramble when officials demanded a centerpiece clock with less than a year to go before the monumental project’s scheduled completion date, his partner said.

In the last weeks of his life, Evans tortured himself over “material delays” — stone from Italy; switches for the building’s fiber-optic network; light fixtures; LED screens, and “clock progress,” according to a hand-scrawled note found on his desk a day before his March 17 suicide.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/09/moynihan-train-hall-czar-killed-himself-as-pressure-mounted/