The future of Penn Station may be up in the air — but a taste of the past has returned.
Tracks Raw Bar and Grill, a longtime watering hole for suburbs-bound commuters and Midtown sports fans alike, has reopened in the transit hub’s Long Island Rail Road concourse.
“Tracks was always known as the place, blue collar and white collar, we all got together — a true melting pot,” said Bruce Caulfield, 71, the bar’s co-owner. “So let’s get in there and start having a few Guinness.”
The bar was among the businesses that closed in 2019 when the MTA began a four-year renovation of the LIRR’s section of the station. The railroad’s corridor reopened in 2023. Until last month, though, Tracks was operating out of a temporary location across the street from Penn.
LIRR President Rob Free called the bar “truly a fixture of Penn Station.”
“Our customers loved to go here and unwind — and miss a couple trains because their companion said, ‘Just one more, just one more,’” he said.
Tracks remains in its old spot, at the northern end of the corridor near the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 subway trains. But nothing of the actual old bar remains, following a $4 million renovation of the space, Caulfield said.
The bar had a so-called soft opening a month ago, but its kitchen only fully opened Wednesday.
The grand reopening comes as the MTA continues to try to improve retail options at its commuter rail hubs.
Caulfield said new signage has driven up foot traffic at Tracks’ sister location, nestled under Grand Central Terminal at the LIRR concourse of Grand Central Madison.
That location opened a year ago, part of an MTA effort to increase foot traffic and draw more retail tenants to the LIRR’s East Side terminal.
Those efforts have been going slowly, but the MTA’s real estate honcho David Florio said Thursday that several more retail deals are in the works at Grand Central Madison.
“We’re negotiating with another restaurant operator, (and) a national coffee operator,” Florio said. “We’re negotiating about four additional spaces.”