November 04, 2004
More Jets details to come?
New York state's quasi-public Empire State Development Agency is expected to officially approve its plan today for a $1.4 billion New York Jets stadium in Manhattan, which with any luck will mean a few more crumbs of information regarding the still-largely-mysterious financing scheme. Today's New York Daily News reports that the Jets stadium would avail itself of tax-exempt government bonds (which we already knew) and that "the Metropolitan Transportation Authority no longer would be responsible for paying any debt service for building a platform above the rail yards for the stadium" (which we never knew was an issue). A more important question is where the state and city will find the money to fill the $950 million hole in the funding plan for the stadium and the accompanying Javits Convention Center expansion, something we've been waiting to hear about for nearly two years now.
Undaunted by such minutiae as a missing billion dollars, Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued to praise the plan. "We have a city of eight million people, the world's second home, people come from around the world, and we can't stage an event with more than 30,000 people," said Bloomberg of New York, which is home to two 50,000-plus-seat stadiums. "You can't grow doing that. You take a look at all of these other cities and they all recognize that and they're all building these big facilities." The number of U.S. stadiums built in the last 17 years with as much capacity as the Jets' planned 75,000-seater: Two, the Denver Broncos' Invesco Field, and the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field, which was built in suburban Prince George's County.
