Olympic switch: New York rejects Manhattan

Olympic switch: New York rejects Manhattan
stadium, proposes another in Queens
The highly contentious New York
Sports and Convention Center,
proposed for the Far West Side
neighborhood of Manhattan, was
defeated on June 7 as New York
State Assembly Speaker Sheldon
Silver and Senate Majority Leader
Joseph L. Bruno refused to approve
the plan. The vote ended New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s multiyear
quest to secure a new stadium,
not only for the New York Jets, but
possibly for the 2012 Olympic
Games. The city’s Olympic bid, however,
was given new hope a few days
later when Bloomberg announced a
new stadium plan in Queens.
The $2.2 billion, 75,000-seat
West Side stadium, which was
being designed for the Jets by New
York–based Kohn Pedersen Fox
(KPF), had recently been replanned
to better fit the scale and character
of the low-rise industrial neighborhood,
including an almost 40 percent
reduction in height, and the addition
of a semitransparent glass facade.
But such efforts came to no avail.
At a press conference on June
7, Silver, who held the deciding vote
on the state’s Public Authorities
Control Board, pointed to several
pressing city issues as reasons for
not supporting the plan. The most
important, perhaps, was his position
that Far West Side development
would have siphoned financial support
from Lower Manhattan, which
is within Silver’s legislative district.
About $1.6 billion of the tab
would have been paid for by the
Jets, including a $250 million payment
to the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority
(MTA) for the West Side
railyard site over which
the stadium was to have
been built. The remaining
$600 million would have
been split by the city and
state as a public subsidy.
“Considering the challenges
already facing the
city and the state of New
York, this plan, at best, is
premature,” said Silver.
Predictably, stadium
supporters such as the
Jets, Bloomberg, and
Governor George Pataki
were outraged. The Jets
pinned much of the
blame on the Cablevision
Corporation, which owns
nearby Madison Square
Garden, which would have
competed with the stadium,
and had bid against the
Jets for the MTA property. Bloomberg
also warned that the stadium’s
defeat might not only cost the city
the Olympics, thousands of jobs, and
significant tax revenue, but might discourage
builders from pursuing other
projects in the city. “One of the great
dangers is that developers are going
to get disheartened and say, ‘I can’t
build anything in New York City
because the politics always get in
the way,’ ” he told reporters on
June 8. Bloomberg is not alone in
bemoaning the wariness of the local
government to fund large-scale projects,
although many support its
ability to veto developers’ plans.
The stadium had been one of
the most controversial building projects
in recent city history, as many
felt it would siphon money from
needed projects, ruin the character
and scale of the neighborhood, break
up connections with the Hudson
River, and bring unmanageable traffic
and crowds into the area on game
days. Supporters felt the project
would not only be a boon to sports
fans, but would help catalyze the
Far West Side, or Hudson Yards
District, which is a 40-square-block
area enclosed by 42nd and 30th
Streets and 8th and 11th Avenues in
Manhattan. The area, which has long
lain dormant, was recently rezoned
to allow significant amounts of commercial
and residential development.
For KPF, which would not
comment, the project’s failure
means the loss of several years of
work. Meanwhile, as the Jets decide
whether to pursue the stadium with
private funds (MTA chairman Peter
Kalikow said on June 9 that if the
team remains interested, the
agency would follow through on the
deal), other area developers are
turning their eyes on the railyards
site, and on the rest of the area.
A second chance in Queens
While the city’s chances to lure the
Olympic games looked bleak after
the West Side stadium defeat, they
improved on June 13 as the city and
the New York Mets announced a plan
to build a new stadium for the Mets in
Flushing, Queens, which could be
converted into an Olympic-size arena
should New York win the games.
The stadium, to open in 2009,
would replace Shea Stadium and
hold 45,000 fans for baseball. It
could be converted into an 80,000-
seat stadium for the Olympics after
the 2011 baseball season. “It wasn’t
our first choice, but it’s an awful good
alternative,” the mayor said. “New
Yorkers aren’t quitters. We don’t just
walk away from our future.”
Mets principal owner Fred
Wilpon told mlb.com, the official Web
site of Major League Baseball, that
the Mets’ new stadium would likely
look similar to Ebbets Field, the longtime
home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A plan for such a stadium, by HOK
Sport+Venue+Event, with a brickand-
limestone facade and exposed
steel girders, was first proposed by
the Mets in 1998. The cost of the
stadium, Wilpon said, would likely be
around $600 million, paid for by the
Mets. Construction will begin next
year, regardless of whether the city
wins its Olympic bid. The city and
state plan to provide $180 million to
upgrade supporting infrastructure,
and about $100 million to make the
stadium Olympic-ready, if necessary.
NYC2012, the committee organized
to bring the Olympics to New York,
will contribute $142 million toward
this cost. The 35,000-seat addition
required for the games would be
removed after their conclusion.
Unlike the Manhattan stadium,
there appears to be little political
opposition to the Queens stadium
plan, which would also include press
and broadcast centers, to be built
near the stadium in Willets Point.
New York is competing with London,
Paris, Madrid, and Moscow for the
2012 games. The host city will be
chosen on July 6 in Singapore. S.L.