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.
2) The model provided by the Yankees clearly showed a new subway entrance on the West Side of River Avenue and a relocated off-ramp from the Macombs Dam Bridge. I know there has also been discussion of adding a new Metro-North station to the area. Can you provide estimates of how much these transit improvements would cost, and how they would be paid for? And are any of these included in the $220 million in city and state infrastructure improvements that were already announced?The model presented at the press conference is a work in progress. There will be a great deal of public outreach over the summer to get feedback on the plan to help us to refine it, so it should not be considered a finished design.The proposed action does not include modifications to the existing subway stations nor the addition of a new Metro North station. While improvements to these facilities may be worth pursuing in the future, our basic working premise, which will be studied in detail in the environmental review process, is that the single largest infrastructure challenge currently faced in the area is the lack of parking. The current plan addresses this through the creation of nearly 5,000 new parking spaces.
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).
3) Mayor Bloomberg has said that both Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium would require "hundreds of millions of dollars" to maintain in coming years. Can you provide an itemized list of these anticipated costs, or at least the major items? Both stadiums are getting very old and as with any aging building require a lot of upkeep and maintenance. Each year, Parks Department and the Department of Design and Construction make necessary repairs to ensure the safety of all in attendance and to ensure that major building systems, such as electric systems, plumbing, HVAC, etc., remain functional. Furthermore, neither existing stadium meets contemporary standards of accessibility for disabled fans, which is an important goal for the City, Yankees and Mets.Finally, both teams' leases expire in December of this year. In our discussions with both the Mets and Yankees, team representatives made it clear that they desired facilities on par with other first class major league baseball facilities located around the country. The cost of such work would represent a major cost to the City of New York, so it was decided that this funding would be better spent leveraging private investment and through a public investment in other infrastructure upgrades such as new parks and open space.
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.
"Clearly Bloomberg and the Yankees have reached an agreement..." that a new Metro North station makes no freaking sense!!! And even if it did, why do you make it sound like going through the MTA capital plan is a sneaky, underhanded move? What other budget would you suggest it go through? This is a new low in your long list of half truths and misrepresentations.
Posted by RogerJ on July 17, 2005 04:26 PM
The issue isn't whether it goes through the MTA capital budget, but whether it's considered a cost of the stadium deal. Numerous sources say that the Yankees will get their Metro-North station (the subway renovation is less clear); if so, and if it's not being included in the publicly stated costs, the environmental review process, etc., then that's certainly sneaky, if not necessarily underhanded.
Posted by Neil on July 17, 2005 05:02 PM