Field of Schemes

July 30, 2005

Off the grid

I'll be traveling for the next few days, so I'll see everyone back here on Wednesday. Play nice with the online poker spammers.

D.C. United joins the fray

I guess Philip Anschutz doesn't really want to own every team in Major League Soccer after all - he's just announced he's selling of D.C. United to local investors. And the new owners' first stated priority? Why, to get a new stadium, of course. No details have emerged on exactly how one would be paid for, but it's worth noting that MLS commissioner Don Garber uttered the dreaded words "public-private partnership."

July 28, 2005

Stick a fork in it

And so the Manhattan New York Jets stadium ends, not with a bang, but with a board meeting. Yesterday the Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed using its own money to pay for a platform over its West Side rail yards, then selling off development rights to the highest bidder. Remarked MTA chair Peter Kalikow: "I would imagine that will be the last word, I hope, you will hear from me about the Jets and the West Side yard." To which I can only say: I hope so for me, too.

The Jets and New Jersey, of course, is another matter. The Jets and Giants are continuing to discuss sharing a new stadium - though apparently talks aren't going well, with the Jets insisting that they can never live with those drapes.

July 27, 2005

Arlington residents sue to keep homes

Supreme Court be damned, property owners on the site of the proposed Dallas Cowboys stadium have filed suit against the eminent-domain taking of their property, saying it violates the state constitution. As you might expect, both plaintiffs and defendants expressed confidence they'd prevail, but plaintiffs' attorney Glenn Sodd got the best sound bite of the day: "The Supreme Court has decided that cities can do whatever they want. Texas judges really think the words 'public use' mean 'public use.'"

Penguins waddle on

The Pittsburgh Penguins - part of an obscure old-time sport called "hockey" - are still chasing a new publicly funded arena, and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says he'll seek "creative solutions" to get it done. "You know, taxpayers are loathe to see public dollars go to sports stadiums," Rendell told reporters. (Yes, yes, we'd heard that.) The most likely scenario remains giving the Pens a state slot-machine license in exchange for them building their own arena, though Rendell said he thought the NHL would frown on actually having a slots parlor in the arena. No wonder New Orleans doesn't have a hockey team...

MTA to Ratner: Sweeten our pot

And the winner is... nobody just yet. New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted this afternoon to postpone a decision on the sale of development rights to its Brooklyn rail yards land, but then said it would give New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner a 45-day exclusive window to negotiate a more acceptable deal.

"I think that the bid that we did get from Forest City [Ratner], while complete and well thought out, frankly was not as high as I expected," said MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow. "I expected the MTA to receive more money." Kalikow didn't explain why the board was choosing to negotiate with the bidder who offered only $50 million, as opposed to the one who offered $150 million, if price was the main object...

July 26, 2005

Ratner's mission from God

Sounds like I missed quite the meeting of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's real-estate committee yesterday. The New York Sun reports that during debate over New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's bid to develop the authority's Brooklyn rail yards - which wasn't even on the committee's formal agenda - "supporters and opponents of developer Bruce Ratner's bid for the site exchanged bitter, profanity-laden personal attacks":

When a spokesman for the anti-Ratner coalition Develop Don't Destroy, Daniel Goldstein, rose to speak at the MTA real estate committee's monthly meeting, the treasurer of the pro-Ratner group BUILD, Jasmin Miller, muttered: "Trust fund baby." Mr. Goldstein wheeled around, looked Ms. Miller in the eye, and unleashed an expletive. ...

[BUILD's] James Caldwell, cast the conflict over the 8.4-acre Vanderbilt Yards site in racial terms.

"If this thing doesn't come out in favor of Ratner, it would be a conspiracy against blacks," Mr. Caldwell said.

He said Mr. Ratner, a 60-year-old white who served in the Koch administration, "is like an angel sent from God" because the developer is willing to negotiate with local black leaders.

Yow. Meanwhile, two local elected officials urged the MTA board to delay a vote on the bids by Ratner and rival developer Extell: "Each one of them is too big," said state assemblymember James Brennan, while city councilmember David Yassky noted: "They've done this backwards. I think it's premature to agree on a sale price before there is an approved development plan."

As for whether they're likely to succeed, accounts differ: Cable news network NY1 says a delay is possible, while Newsday reports that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's four representatives on the 17-member MTA board are already set to vote for Ratner, with Gov. George Pataki's six appointees likely to follow the governor's lead as well. Newsday also reports that "board members have already been briefed on the details" of the two bids, but board member Barry Feinstein objected at yesterday's meeting: "You're really talking to people who don't have any idea about what the details of either of the proposals are." Transparency: It's what the MTA is all about.

LATE NOTE: Just caught Charles Bagli's report in the New York Times that if Extell wins the bid, they've promised to let Ratner build a basketball arena on the site. Only one problem there: Since Extell would only be buying the 200-foot-wide rail yard property, not the adjacent blocks of private buildings, somebody would need to pay off the gods of geometry.

A's owner: Freeloading fans should buy season tix, dammit

New Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff has plenty of ideas for his new dream stadium - condos in the outfield, 12th-row luxury boxes - but he makes clear the main reason he wants a new home for his team: It's too easy for fans to buy tickets. Wolff envisions a stadium that, at 35,000 seats, would be the smallest in baseball. His reasoning: "Right now our capacity [43,662] is too big, and it makes it too hard to sell season tickets. That's why we have the highest walk-up traffic in major league baseball." Artificial scarcity: It's the new black!

Wolff also admitted, contrary to previous headlines, that he'd be asking for public subsidies for the project: "The majority of the transaction would be private, but not 100 percent. We'd need the city or county's help wherever we wind up."

July 25, 2005

The gift that keeps on giving, and giving...

When Milwaukee's stadium board reported last month that the final cost of the Brewers' Miller Park had been calculated at $392 million, they didn't mean, you know, final final. That's because as part of the Brewers' lease, the stadium district kicks in $1.75 million a year in tax money to a "future improvements" fund. (The team contributes $750,000 a year.) Now, new Brewers owner Mark Attanasio says the ballclub needs more revenue, and wants to tap that fund to pay for new scoreboards and ad displays at Miller Park, which, you'll recall, opened all the way back in Aught-One.

The Milwaukee Business Journal further notes: "The team's lease with the stadium district requires that, if 75 percent of the Major League stadiums have an amenity that the Brewers want, it can be added with funds from the segregated fund." Does that mean they can use it to buy a third baseman?

July 24, 2005

Brooklyn land bids: The winner is...?

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has released details of the competing bids for its Brooklyn rail yards site - and if you're hoping to understand what they mean, for godsakes don't read the local newspapers:

The Daily News has New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner coming in at $50 million in cash, "but other planned extras balloon the bid to an estimated value of $369 million"; rival Extell Development, meanwhile, "is offering the MTA $150 million in cash while also planning to use up to $150 million in public funds." Ratner, reports the News, would require $200 million in city and state cash subsidies.
The New York Times, meanwhile, counts only the cash bids, reporting that Extell's $150 million is "three times the amount Mr. Ratner bid for the property." The Times also notes that a law passed by the state legislature last month requires the MTA to take the highest offer for its land, and that while it hasn't yet taken effect, Richard Brodsky, chair of the state assembly's public authorities committee, says the MTA "ought to live by the law."

What's going on here? One possible explanation comes from neighborhood arena opponents Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, who indicate that those "extras" promised by Ratner are really just expenses that other developers, such as Extell, would pay out of their project budget. DDDb further observes that Ratner's memorandum of understanding with the state and city indicates further subsidies towards "extraordinary infrastructure costs" - though, as the MOU just says that the public "will consider making additional contributions" toward these costs, it's hard to determine just what this means. More on this as things become clearer, if they ever do.

Meanwhile, revisiting the wreckage of the MTA's last attempted land sale, the New York Jets have missed a deadline to put up a deposit on the West Side rail yards; the team could have its purchase rescinded at the same Wednesday MTA board meeting that will consider the Brooklyn bids. Not that the Jets probably care much: They just settled their lawsuit with the state of New Jersey over rent at Giants Stadium, possibly clearing the way for a new stadium-sharing plan with the Giants.

July 21, 2005

Smoochiefest in Brooklyn

Two new articles on the strange lovefest between Brooklyn community organizer Bertha Lewis and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Nets owner Bruce Ratner. Both the New York Observer and the Village Voice (Jarrett Murphy reporting, not me) note that the endorsement of Ratner's arena complex deal by Lewis' Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), in exchange for commitments to build affordable housing, provides a crucial boost to the deal, thanks to what the Observer calls Lewis' "moral authority" - though veterans of her dealings in 1999's Parade Grounds ballpark controversy might beg to differ.

Speaking of Ratner, he's wearing a new hat these days - no, not that one - that of newspaper publisher. That's right, the would-be savior of Brooklyn has become the first pro sports team owner to start an entire newspaper to promote his arena dreams, with the front-page breaking news headline: "BROOKLYN'S BOOMING: Atlantic Yards Will Bring Jobs, Housing and Hoops." (Get your PDF copy here.) Ratner employees have been spotted handing out the freebie at local subway stations, though opinions differ as to whether anyone is actually gullible enough to read them.

July 20, 2005

New seats, condos floated for Fens

With the fate of Fenway Park resolved for the foreseeable future, talk is now turning to what happens to baseball's oldest ballpark, and the suddenly hot surrounding neighborhood. In the latest of a series of ballpark expansions, Red Sox execs are now considering adding "several hundred" seats atop the Laundry Building, which sits behind the right-field bleachers. Meanwhile, the team is preparing to fight plans for a 10-to-15-story hotel-and-condo project that is being proposed for a plot of land just south of Fenway; Sox stadium czar Janet Marie Smith warned against the "Manhattan-ization of the Fenway," and others have worried that the building would cast the playing field into shadow at certain times of day.

Pawlenty: Twins deal unlikely this year

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty now says the odds are 60-40 against a special legislative session to, among other things, vote on public funding for a new Twins stadium, saying it would be too hard to guarantee that the session could be wrapped up in just a few days. If so, we'll get to see if county commissioner Mike Opat goes through with his threat to take his stadium bill and go home.

July 19, 2005

Yanks, Mets rent breaks to cost city $150m

Chalk up another hidden public cost for the proposed New York Yankees and Mets' "privately funded" stadium deals. New figures from the city parks department reveal that the city would be losing out on more rent revenue under the deals than was previously reported.

As you may recall, under the proposed deals, neither team would pay rent, but each would take on all maintenance costs for their new stadiums. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other stadium backers had previously described this an fair tradeoff, as, in the Yankees' case, the city would lose the $5 million a year in rent it currently collects, but would also save on maintenance costs, currently running at about $5 million a year.

Well, not exactly. The Yanks' and Mets' leases work a bit differently - the Yanks pay maintenance costs then deduct it from their rent, while the Mets pay rent and let the city pay for maintenance out of that - but in each case, the city is netting considerable rent money even after maintenance costs. The previously reported $26.43 million figure that the Yankees have paid the city in rent over the last five years, it turns out, is the proceeds after maintenance deductions. For the Mets the figure is smaller - $3.75 million over five years - but still in the plus column.

Moreover, these figures don't take into account the five-year rent rebates for "stadium planning" that the two teams got as a going-away present from outgoing mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001. Though Giuliani authorized $5 million a year for each team, the ballclubs have actually drawn down a bit less: a total of $10.97 million for the Yankees and $15.95 million for the Mets. Add those to our previous totals, and we get five-year rent totals of $37.4 million for the Yanks ($7.5 million a year), and $19.7 million for the Mets ($3.9 million a year).

I know, I know, enough with the numbers already - what will this mean in terms of costs of the two new stadiums? Without belaboring you with the math, suffice to say that losing out on a potential $7.5 million a year in future Yankees rent would cost the city a total of about $106.9 million (in present value); the Mets' free rent would cost the city a total of about $56.3 million PV. Adding that back into our previous estimates, we get:

YANKEES: $385-475 million ($140m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $0-90m in Metropolitan Transportation Authority capital expenses, $57m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $44m in property-tax savings, $22m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $107m in forgone city rent revenues)
METS: $443 million ($85m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $75m in state funds, $100m in forgone city parking revenues, $57m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $39m in property-tax savings, $16m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $56m in forgone city rent revenues)
NETS: $451 million ($100m in city funds, $100m in state funds, $50m in tax-exempt bond savings, $21m in property-tax savings, $180m in discounted land price)

TOTAL: $1.279-1.369 billion

Note that I've tried to make these numbers even more conservative, by excluding the cost of state-funded parking garages near the Yankees stadium (since the team claims the state will recoup its investment through parking fees) and including a range of $0-90 million for the cost of the maybe they'll happen, maybe they won't Bronx mass transit improvements. I've also reduced the amount of expected tax-exempt bond savings to the teams, since it's unlikely they'll be allowed to use this financial instrument for 100% of their construction costs.

Still, the price tag keeps going up, thanks to those forgone baseball rents, and to the Nets land subsidy, which I now have an estimate for. The whole shebang may not quite hit $1.5 billion, as I predicted, but it's getting awfully close.

Rumbles in the Bronx

Any notion that the New York Yankees stadium plan could sail through without local opposition was exploded last night, as nearly 200 people packed a meeting room at the Bronx Museum for a hearing on the city's environmental impact review of the project.

After a few words of cautious optimism from local elected officials, residents of the South Bronx neighborhood unleashed a barrage of criticism of the stadium plan, ranging from the loss of parkland for up to five years ("I'm concerned with our youngsters not having to wait until the Yankee stadium is up before they can play in these parks") to the increased traffic from new parking garages ("it's absurd to bring more cars to this neighborhood when all the kids are sick with asthma") to the effect of years of construction on residents of apartment buildings across from the proposed stadium site on Jerome Avenue ("I feel like I'm being forced out of this neighborhood, and I've lived here 35 years... I don't know what the plan is, but I don't think the plan is for a lot of us to remain"). The city's lack of notice to the community board or to local residents and businesses that the project was coming - "we heard nothing," said Louis Gonzalez, one of the proprietors of the family-owned Stan's Sports World across the street from Yankee Stadium - was a common refrain, and a popular one, to judge from the bursts of applause that greeted each remark.

The final speaker, Daniel Tavares, a resident of the Jerome Avenue apartments, pointed to his tank top as evidence of his frequent use of the Macombs Dam running track, which would be obliterated by the new stadium. "This is not a stadium that's for the Bronx," he thundered, noting that most local residents can't afford high-priced tickets. "If this is not a done deal, we have to march around that stadium 50,000 times" - and the rest of his remarks were drowned out by thunderous applause.

July 17, 2005

NYC stadium mysteries revealed

Stop the clock! On Friday, 29 days after I e-mailed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office with three key questions about his Yankees and Mets stadium deals, I finally got a reply - not from City Hall, but from Warner Johnston, director of public information of the city parks department. Without further ado:

1) Can you confirm whether or not both the Mets and Yankees stadium projects would go through ULURP [the city land-use process]? And if so, when is an EIS [environmental impact statement] expected to be formally submitted?

The new Yankee Stadium will go through ULURP. It is anticipated that the DEIS will be completed this fall. An EIS was completed for the Mets site in 2001; the new project falls within the parameters analyzed in this report, so the EIS is still valid. The legislation that that was passed to allow for the original construction of Shea Stadium should also allow for the construction of the new stadium. However, we do not intend to move forward with the project without full participation from the local community and elected officials.

TRANSLATION: Since I first sent this question, it's become clear that the Yankees plan would go through ULURP - in fact, the first step in this process, a "scoping" hearing on the environmental impact statement, is scheduled for tomorrow (Monday) evening. (6 pm at the Bronx Museum on Grand Concourse and 164th St., for anyone interested in attending.) But that the city plans to construct a new Mets stadium under the legislation used to build Shea Stadium - which opened in 1964, eleven years before ULURP came into existence - is pretty stunning. I wonder if they'll have to reconvene the Board of Estimate.

As for commitments to "full participation from the local community and elected officials," that's nice, but a far cry from ULURP, which requires the input of community boards and a series of public hearings.

TRANSLATION: "Pay no attention to the transit costs behind the curtain." Clearly Bloomberg and the Yankees have reached an agreement that the new commuter rail station and subway station renovations will be considered a separate deal that will go through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital budget - whether because the mayor is unsure if they'll be built or because he's playing hide-the-subsidy is unclear. In any case, this explains the widely varied figures given for the public cost of transit improvements: $90 million, according to a Yankees official (as told to the Daily News), $20-30 million according to Andy Zimbalist (who wouldn't divulge his source for this).

TRANSLATION: "No, you can't have an itemized list." More than that, though, it turns out that Bloomberg's claims that the city would have to spend "hundreds of millions" of dollars on upkeep of the existing stadiums isn't about upkeep at all - it's the cost of meeting George Steinbrenner and Fred Wilpon's wish lists for making their stadiums "first-class," no doubt by adding luxury boxes, new concessions concourses, and so on. In other words, these are the projected costs of renovation - which, since the resulting improvements would boost team revenues, the teams themselves could reasonably be asked to pay for.

I've submitted a set of followup questions to my new pal Warner, and will report back here if I hear anything more. Clearly, though, the depths of Bloomberg's latest stadium deals are far murkier than anyone could have imagined.

Give this guy credit for creativity, anyway: Michigan resident Michael Devine has filed suit against the hotel tax that's funding the Arizona Cardinals' new stadium, charging that it's an illegal restraint of interstate commerce. Devine, who visited Arizona two years ago, also says that a car rental tax being used for stadium funding violates the state constitution, which requires "levies on the registration on the registration, operation or use of vehicles" to be used for highway and road projects. Devine's lawyer, Gregory Hanley, previously challenged a $1.50-a-ticket service fee the Detroit Lions continued charging to fans even after the city of Pontiac stopped collecting it. (He lost.)

That all-but-complete $687 million Indianapolis Colts stadium project remains everything but done, as Mayor Bart Peterson says "fairly significant issues" have forced the postponement of a planned August 1 groundbreaking. Peterson didn't provide details, but did indicate that a planned $3 ticket tax is "a deal-breaker" for the Colts - which would be a pretty significant issue indeed, since the ticket tax is one of the only chunks of stadium change that would come out of the team's pocket instead of taxpayers'.

Meanwhile, Indianapolis Star sports columnist Bob Kravitz has penned an extraordinary mea culpa on his prior support for the Colts stadium plan:

Kravitz even asks - and answers - the question that must be on his readers' minds:

The Detroit Free Press reports that Wayne County is considering demolishing Tiger Stadium to make way for a new "criminal justice campus featuring jails, courthouses and law enforcement headquarters." I was going to make the obvious comment, but then I see that Frank Rashid of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club has already done it for me: "With all the already vacant space, I'd think they could find someplace other than next to a redeveloping historic neighborhood and a space that does not result in the destruction of an historic site." (The county says it's considering other sites as well.)

MLB grand vizier Bud Selig had plenty of time during the All-Star break to sound off on various stadium debates. If you were hoping for anything substantive, of course, you'll be sadly disappointed:

The special session of the Minnesota legislature ended yesterday with a budget deal following a partial shutdown of the state government, but without approval of the Twins stadium deal, which would require special state approval for Hennepin County to raise sales taxes without a referendum.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty hinted he might call a second special session to deal with the Twins bill - as well as a University of Minnesota football stadium, transportation and environmental funding, and public employee pensions - but also said the stadium issue could wait until the next regular session in 2006 if necessary. This, as you imagine, did not please Twins stadium czar Jerry Bell, who grumbled that construction costs would be higher next year, and that "if we knew there was going to be a special session - not this 'maybe, we might, we'd like to' - that would be enough for us to start some work now and spend some money."

Likely of greater concern to Bell than an itchy wallet finger: The 4-3 majority on the Hennepin County commission that passed the Twins stadium tax might not be around in 2006. Peter McLaughlin, part of the pro-stadium majority, has a good chance of being elected mayor of Minneapolis, and fellow board member Mike Opat says "it's unlikely to me that a ballpark supporter would follow in his seat." Added Opat: "if it doesn't happen this year, I think it's doubtful we would make the proposal again. A lot of it is I don't know how great my appetite would be for it next year." Either somebody's just getting frustrated and making veiled threats, or he was forced to eat too many green beans as a child.

Apparently the New York Times isn't the only newspaper that bemoans how hard it is to evade the democratic process these days. Bob Sansavere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press today has a column raging about how state legislators are holding up a "minuscule tax" (total cost to taxpayers: $353 million) for a Minnesota Twins stadium just so they can spent time on frivolous matters like passing a state budget. Writes Sansavere:

Bell is, of course, Twins stadium czar Jerry Bell, who is quoted three times in Sansavere's article. Twins president Dave St. Peter gets three more citations, while Vikings stadium honcho Lester Bagley gets one. Total number of stadium critics, or for that matter state legislators, quoted in the piece: zero. I guess that's better than putting words in the mouths of opponents, but only slightly.

With tonight's baseball All-Star Game at Detroit's Comerica Park, both the Associated Press and the New York Times ran pieces noticing that its predecessor, Tiger Stadium, is still standing, though now locked and derelict - and an embarrassment to the Tigers management, which would rather not have the constant reminder of what it abandoned in order to get a shiny new mallpark at public expense.

Detroit city publicist (Detroit has a city publicist?) Sylvia Crawford told the Times that the only reason Tiger Stadium is still standing is "because the city yielded to calls by preservationists and fan groups that wanted to see the stadium stay." Tigers flack Michael Healy, meanwhile, asserted that MLB had expressed interest in holding an All-Star event at Tiger Stadium, but the team rejected it because "the ballpark's interior is in disrepair" - with neither Healy nor the Times noting that the city has been paying Tigers owner Mike Ilitch for the past six years to maintain the ballpark.

The AP story was slightly less elegiac, noting that many fans and players say they miss Tiger Stadium, and describing how "some of the best seats at Tiger Stadium were in the first few rows of the upper deck behind the plate. At Comerica Park, those same seats provide breathtaking views, but are so far away fans feel like they're looking down on the game from the roof of a tall building." Nonetheless, AP writer Larry Lage wrote that "even [Tiger Stadium's] supporters acknowledge it had to be replaced because of its crumbling infrastructure, obstructed views and lack of many luxury suites."

When Kim Stroud of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club spotted a pre-publication copy of the story on the wire, she immediately phoned Lage to point out that Tiger Stadium supporters had acknowledged no such thing. (Numerous engineering reports during the stadium's final days found no significant infrastructure problems, and even not counting its obstructed-view seats, Tiger Stadium still holds more fans than Comerica Park.) Lage, according to Stroud, agreed to ask his editor to change the line to "even some supporters," but it ended up published as originally written.

The last thing London needs is more bad news today, but it got it anyway, albeit hopefully on a smaller scale: Now that Britain's capital has been picked to host the 2012 Olympics, there's concern over how to get all the required stadiums and transit infrastructure built on time. "We don't have a very good track record on these major projects completed on deadline without having to spend an awful lot of money," Cynthia Hay of the Capital Transport Campaign told the Guardian yesterday.

London Olympic organizers need only look to Vancouver, host of the 2010 winter games, for a cautionary tale: The director of British Columbia's Council of Construction Trades Associations warns that rising steel and labor costs, combined with an immovable deadline, could mean "when it comes right down to the crunch, it's very possible that we're still going to have to import people at whatever price it will take, to bring them here to help us finish things off." Vancouver Olympic organizers say cost overruns on the now-$620 million project could rise by between 25 and 40%; they say they'll "do whatever it takes" to avoid hitting up the government for cost overruns.

It's like deja vu all over again: On the deadline day for bids to buy the Brooklyn rail yards that Nets owner Bruce Ratner wants for his basketball arena development, a competing bidder has emerged. Extell, a development company that had previously butted heads with Ratner over development rights to the new New York Times building near Times Square, has proposed a row of apartment buildings that would meet several of the demands of Ratner's neighborhood opponents: It would not require demolition of existing buildings, it would be smaller in scale (28 stories max vs. Ratner's 60), and it would be vetted by the city land-use process, including an environmental impact statement and public hearings. (The Ratner plan, by contrast, would likely evade city oversight, and features towering structures inspired by Frank Gehry's discarded Chinese-food cartons.)

Dan Goldstein of the community group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn today told a City Hall press conference - at which, incidentally, a Ratner flunky in dark glasses and stiletto heels stalked about collecting the names of reporters in attendance - that the Extell plan "doesn't rip off taxpayers," but in truth we don't really know what public subsidies would be involved. The Times reported that the Extell plan "would not require public subsidies beyond $200 million from the city and state to build a platform over the rail beds." Newsday quoted Goldstein as saying that the plan "would use just the $100 million in city funds, but would take advantage of available tax incentives," but Goldstein later told me he himself doesn't know the specifics of the Extell plan.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board could vote on the land sale as early as its next meeting on July 27 - maybe by then they'll deign to let the public know the details of what they're voting on.

Lots of news tidbits floating in from across the continent, but with the holiday weekend and all, I'm afraid there's only time for a quick look at each one:

The New York papers have been praising Mayor Michael Bloomberg for abandoning his unpopular Jets stadium deal - actually, being forced to abandon it, but whatever - in favor of the less controversial Nets, Mets, and Yankees project. Only one problem: In the Nets case, at least, Bloomberg's constituents are no more sold on the deal. A New York Times poll found that city residents oppose the Nets arena plan by 45% to 37%; asked "What if a new arena in Brooklyn cost $200 million in public funds?" - the bare minimum it would cost taxpayers - opposition rose to 61%, versus 18% in favor. Those polled favored building a new stadium for the Mets and the Olympics in Queens (49-40%), but support dropped to 27% when asked: "What if a new stadium in Queens cost New York City and New York State $180 million in public funds?" (Actual cost: More like $400 million.)

The poll didn't ask voters' thoughts on a new Yankees stadium. It did, though, reveal that "new stadiums" was the top-ranked item when residents were asked to name "the worst thing [Bloomberg] has done since he became mayor."

Thanks to Andrew Pate, Trevor Mills, Mason Brown, Brian Borawski, Diane Firstman, Josh Safran, Matthew J. Wiegand, Save Fenway Park!, the NYC 20-Never Campaign, and all our anonymous donors for their generous help in making this website possible. Drops of water turn the mill...