The bids are in on the Union Square police station rebuild. MTA Construction & Development opened twelve bids February 5 on contract C43760R — the gut renovation of the NYPD's Transit District 4 station house, built into the mezzanine of the 14th Street–Union Square subway station in Manhattan. T. Moriarty & Son, Inc. is the apparent low bidder at $31,498,851. That is the evaluated number on this A+B contract — bidders priced the work and the calendar together, and Moriarty's construction price alone was $30,477,000 before the schedule value was added in.

The top of the tab was crowded. Gramercy Group came in second at $32,170,530 — 2.1 percent off the low. Paul J. Scariano was right there at $32,253,000, Zaman Construction at $32,967,969, and Navillus and TC Electric both landed under $33.3 million. From there the tab climbed to Forte Construction's $39,834,824 at the top. Twelve bidders and a 2-percent gap at the front means plenty of firms wanted this job and priced it sharp.

The low bidder signed up for a full tear-out. The contract calls for demolition of the existing district office and reconstruction of the whole facility — architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, utility and communications systems, all replaced. Per the MTA's project documents, that means rebuilding the administrative and detention spaces, new HVAC, a new fire sprinkler system fed by its own new water service, new drainage, and pulling out old fan-plant equipment. The job reaches above ground too: a new ventilation structure — a surface walkway grate — goes into Union Square Park, with the park land and sidewalks restored wherever the work disturbs them. One catch that matters: both the station and Union Square Park are on the National Register of Historic Places, so applicable parts of the work run under state historic-preservation rules. The clock is 670 days.

The bid documents spell out exactly what that historic-preservation catch means on site. The spec book carries its own 18-page Historic Preservation section, plus a dedicated section for cleaning landmarked terra cotta and another for cleaning landmarked surfaces generally — this isn't a blanket sign-off, it's specific system-by-system work. Landscaping in Union Square Park has to wait until the historic-preservation work is done and has to match the approved historic-preservation plan, not just get restored to how it looked before. And because the station and the NYPD facility stay open and running through construction, the contract prices railroad access straight into the bid: a full weekend track diversion runs $74,501 a shot, a shorter Saturday-into-Sunday window is $37,060, and a single flagger shift is $1,314. This is a job built around live trains, not a closed building.

The bidding itself carried one real change before it closed. MTA C&D issued the IFB October 24, held the pre-bid conference November 6 and the site tour November 7, then pushed the question deadline back a day — November 20 to November 21 — in a formal Addendum No. 1 dated November 18. A second addendum followed November 26; it did not touch the December 3 bid due date, so it didn't move the February 5 bid opening either. Subs eyeing this one should also know the participation clock: the low bidder owes MTA C&D a completed M/WBE utilization plan within seven calendar days of the bid due date, with an SDVOB plan running its own 20-day agency review.

This is not an office job in a quiet corner. Transit District 4 is the NYPD command that polices the subway from inside Union Square station itself — the district is headquartered right at 14th Street and Union Square West. And that station is the fourth-busiest in the system: 22,811,597 riders passed through in 2024, riding the 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R and W. The MTA says the facility got outgrown the plain way — thirty years of rising ridership and more command personnel packed into the same mezzanine footprint. The rebuild gives the officers covering those platforms a station house that actually works: heat, air, sprinklers, and room to operate.

Now the standard caveat, and it is real: apparent low is not an award. The bids are under review — the MTA checks the numbers, the paperwork and the bidder before anything is signed, and on an A+B job it is the evaluated total that decides who is low, not the raw price. The award will show up on MTA C&D's recent-awards list when it is done.

This one took the long road to a bid opening. The MTA first advertised the job in May 2023 as a two-step design-build procurement. It came back in October 2025 as a straight low-bid contract under the C43760R number, with an advertised range of $10 million to $50 million — and twelve bidders showed up to chase it.