November 18, 2004

NYC pol watch

The city council neglected to issue an official proclamation, but clearly today was Hold An Anti-Stadium Press Conference Day in New York. Taking it from the top:

• City council speaker Giff Miller, who earlier in the week gave me a mealy-mouthed reply to questions about the New York Jets stadium project, today held a news conference to say that he's opposed to the mayor's plan to spend $600 million on the stadium - but will support the rezoning plan that would allow it to happen. That zoning vote, due in January, is the council's only certain opportunity to weigh in on the stadium plan, though with the mayor's office remaining coy about where exactly it plans to get the $600 million, there's still the chance of an appropriations bill somewhere down the road.
• While Miller was giving both sides of his mouth a workout, city public advocate Betsy Gotbaum issued an analysis estimating that the public cost of the stadium could be more like $2 billion. The items on Gotbaum's list included the $600 million already on the table, $150 million in construction-industry inflation since the original cost estimate in 2001, $280 million in projected cost overruns (the last project by the stadium architects went 20% over budget), the $151 million in additional construction projects outlined by Andy Zimbalist last Sunday, and the big item: anywhere from $600 million to $1 billion for rights to the MTA land that the stadium would be built atop of. City stadium czar Dan Doctoroff has previously promised that the Jets would pay the MTA "fair market value" for its land, but given that the team will already be on the hook for $800 million in stadium construction costs, it's hard to see how they'd afford to pay a billion dollars for land as well - and equally hard to know how you'd tell if they did, given that the financing plan looks something like this.
• Finally, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, members of three Brooklyn community boards, and other groups concerned about the city's Nets arena plan held their own press conference on the steps of City Hall to gripe about the lack of information and public process that's typified the plan so far. (As you'll recall, the last word from the city back in May on financing for the $2.5 billion development project was, and I quote, "We don't know.") As councilmember Tish James, whose district includes the planned arena site, summed things up: "We don't even know what the project entails. We don't know how much subsidies are involved. We don't know how much the MTA rail yards are being sold for. We don't know how this project is going to be financed. We don't know how much subsidies will be involved with respect to the affordable housing units, and how many units are actually going to be affordable, and for what income bracket. There's a lot of unanswered questions." You're telling me.

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