November 18, 2005

Bronx Jeers IV: A New Hope?

Stop me if you've heard this before: Representatives of the New York Yankees and city officials traveled to the South Bronx last night to present their stadium plans to local residents, and were met by an angry throng intent on telling them where to stick their blueprints. The "town meeting" called by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion was slated to run from 6 to 8 pm, but it was 7:35 by the time the assembled suits had put away their Powerpoint presentations and the floor was opened for questions - by which time the commandeered high school gym was filled with shouts, jeers, and chants of "Let the community speak!" and (to Carrion) "You work for us!" As the boro prez slowly picked through the submitted questions - all speakers had to fill out a form stating name, affiliation, and question topic, and Carrion's eyesight conveniently failed at least once when an anti-stadium activist was next on the queue - things only got rowdier, both in the crowd and on the dias. Some highlights:

• An older Bronx resident named Alberta Hunter (no, not that one) asking with polite puzzlement: "Why are they suggesting such a crazy idea as this?"
• A hapless presenter from developer Tishman Speyer, trying to placate the crowd by paging through a slide show of stadium renderings and murmuring, "See the trees?" while trying to ignore the catcalls around her.
• Carrion waxing poetic about the virtues of a new high school, hotel, and convention center, declaring, "the stadium is really not the centerpiece" of the plan - while standing in front of a planning mockup containing no school, no hotel, and no convention center, only a stadium.
• Yankees president (and former city deputy mayor) Randy Levine insisting, "We love the present Yankee Stadium," but "it's not going to last ten years" - conveniently ignoring the findings of the city's own buildings commissioner in 1998 that "there's no reason why Yankee Stadium can't be around for another 75 years if it's maintained properly." (Levine later topped himself by shouting out to the crowd: "Shouting out things as if they're facts doesn't help!")
• Greg Bell of Bronx Voices for Equal Inclusion demanding, "What do we have to do to get it through to the borough president, to Mr. Levine, to economic development agency of the city of New York, and to the parks department, that we don't want it? ... The Yankees can take the engineers and technology available and put it south and west, as recommended by your community board" - and receiving a standing ovation.

As the evening deteriorated, Carrion transmogrified from high-school principal to, well, spitting, out-of-control high school principal: When one longtime local resident accused him of selling out his community to "big money," the boro prez angrily snapped, "Anybody who questions my integrity..." before being drowned out by boos. At another point, he lectured the peanut gallery, "The purpose of a public hearing is for people to ask questions!" Shortly thereafter, he called the proceedings to a close and fled the podium, clutching the sign-in sheets of at least twenty audience members who had yet to speak.

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