May 23, 2005
Silver unmoved by Olympic threats
More bad news for the New York Jets stadium plan, aka the Lobbyist Employment Act of 2005. State assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, who holds a veto over the project, says the city's 2012 Olympic bid is a "longshot" that shouldn't drive stadium construction, and insists that "no public incentives for commercial development should be provided" for the $5 billion-plus Hudson Yards development project of which the stadium would be a part.
Public incentives for commercial development in Silver's downtown district, now, that's another story. The speaker also issued his long-awaited demands for lower Manhattan redevelopment, which some have viewed as his price for backing a Jets stadium, and they're a doozy: a "Marshall Plan" that would provide billions of dollars in state and city bonds and tax breaks to spur commercial development near the World Trade Center site. If there's any way to make the Hudson Yards deal even worse, this would be it - the last thing New York needs is even more property tax breaks for developers.
