February 07, 2005
Mayor's office lies, Jets prez cries
Yet another hearing on the New York Jets stadium controversy today, this time by several city council committees. I skipped this one, but several tidbits of note have filtered out through the media coverage:
- Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff confirmed that the mayor's office plans to fund the city's $300 million share of stadium construction costs by siphoning off payments from developers before they reach the city treasury. (City council speaker Gifford Miller called this "a $71 million slush fund"; get in line, pal.) What this means is that the Bloomberg administration was lying last year when deputy budget director Alan Anders testified that the city's stadium subsidy would come solely from "revenue streams [that] are currently not supporting the city budget." Okay, maybe they weren't lying; maybe they were misinformed. About what they themselves planned to do. Could happen.
- Doctoroff, explaining why it would be a bad idea to build housing instead of a stadium on the Western Rail Yards site: "We don't have unlimited demand. All that does is potentially shift value and shift development from east of 11th Avenue to west of 11th Avenue. It doesn't create additional value when you assume demand is relatively fixed." That 28 million square feet of office that Deputy Dan wants to build, though, that wouldn't cannibalize any development elsewhere. Perish the thought.
- Jets president Jay Cross, on the binding arbitration his team entered into with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over the price of the rail yards: "We will do everything possible to pay whatever amount of money that he sets - we hope it won't be so high as to kill the project. ... If it's a reasonable number, then we will abide by his number." (If not, presumably it's time for Plan B.) Does this mean that if the MTA doesn't like the final number, they can walk away, too? Remind me what part of this is "binding" again?
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