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February 27, 2005

Friends in high places (cont'd)

Nice Newsday op-ed today by Rick Eckstein and Kevin Delaney, authors of Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, pointing out that history does not bode well for the New York Jets stadium proposal. They write:

New stadiums are built more quickly, more easily and with more public money when there is a supportive and unified business community anchored by large, locally headquartered corporations. ... These companies have the resources and the leverage to make stadiums happen, even in the face of significant grass-roots opposition and even with team owners playing a minimalist role.

But where the corporate community is divided, team owners and elected officials must play a more substantive and less symbolic role - usually at the stadium proposal's expense.

This is a more genteel, sociological way of saying that while grassroots opposition is nice, the only sure way of getting a real stadium debate is to have a billionaire corporation or two in your corner. (Hello, Cablevision!) Where the powers that be - business leaders, mayor, governor, city council - are all aligned in favor of a stadium, it's incredibly hard for any public groundswell to stop it. Knock a couple of chinks in that armor, though - as in New York, where many prominent elected officials are opposed, in addition to the city's largest cable operator - and suddenly the critics are allowed out of the woodwork. (Eckstein and Delaney note that both Newsday and the New York Times have also been publicly critical of the Jets stadium project, but that can be just as easily seen as a result of the lack of business/political consensus, not a contributing factor.)

The representative quote on all this continues to belong to longtime community activist Frank Rashid of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club, who told us this story that appeared in Field of Schemes:

On one occasion, Rashid recalls, he wound up calling the Free Press to complain about an inaccurate story about the Fan Club. He pointed out to a city desk editor that the reporter had printed inaccurate statements by the group's opponents about the Fan Club, statements that the reporter himself had to have known were untrue.

The editor, according to Rashid, replied with indignation, "What do you expect? [Then-Detroit Tigers owner] Tom Monaghan has made money. He's paid his dues. Who are you guys?"

"I really appreciated the honesty," says Rashid. "But, damn! None of us is disreputable. We're all people who are solid citizens, but we don't have money. Solid citizens without money don't count as well as somebody who's got a big corporation."

Indy mayor wields combine stick

The threats of the Indianapolis Colts moving to Los Angeles or of not getting to host future Super Bowls didn't seem to be doing the trick, so Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson pulled out the big guns yesterday: Without a new stadium and convention center, he warned, the city could be forced to stop hosting the annual NFL scouting combine. And the combine, said Peterson, has an annual economic impact for the city of $3 million.

There's that term "economic activity" again. As you'll recall, previously breathless reports have said that a new stadium would generate $30 million a year in economic activity (defined, you'll remember, as any money spent within city limits, regardless of who gets it) - which would translate into $1.2 million a year in new local tax revenues. Applying the same ratio, the scouting combine could be expected to generate $120,000 a year - all for an annual investment of a mere $40 million or so by the public.

If that sounds tempting, man, have I got an eBay auction for you.

February 24, 2005

Miller vows to block Jets stadium funds

Throw another log on the New York Jets stadium controversy: city council speaker (and mayoral candidate) Gifford Miller, in his State of the City speech today, said he'll introduce legislation to require council approval of any stadium spending. Said Miller:

Over the last year, the Mayor has tried to pull an end run around this Council to get approval for his stadium. He’s sought to bypass the people's elected legislature by backdoor approvals through obscure and unaccountable state bureaucracies. He's tried to arrange a massive expenditure of public funds without any oversight from the City's publicly elected representatives.

So I will introduce legislation to stop the Mayor's plan to finance the stadium through a slush fund and make sure that every public dollar our City spends goes through our public budget process.

The question now is: Can he do it? The Bloomberg slush fund, you'll recall, is a plan to divert payments in lieu of property taxes (PILOTs) paid by developers to the city's Industrial Development Agency, before they reach the city treasury. Despite poring over the General Municipal Law and the city charter, some of the best minds in city politics are still baffled as to whether this would be legal. If it is legal, though, there would seem to be little the council could do to stop it (the IDA is authorized under state law, and the city charter can effectively only be changed with approval of the mayor); and if it isn't legal, then the council doesn't need legislation, it needs to file a lawsuit.

I posed these questions to Miller's office this afternoon; as of the end of the business day, I still hadn't heard back.

Meanwhile, how the ongoing Jets war is resolved will have a profound impact on New York's other proposed sports subsidies, for the Nets, Yankees and Mets. I take a look at some of the parallels - including the possibility of more PILOT slush funds for these projects - in an op-ed in today's Newsday.

Colts stadium springs eternal

It's back! Barely one week after the Indiana state legislature killed a bill to finance a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts with money from legalized slot machines, an assembly committee approved a new funding plan, which will now head to the House floor.

The new bill would use a mix of funding sources, including: a 1% hike in casino taxes, increased hotel and car-rental taxes, diversion of existing state tax money from sports and convention facilities, a $10 ticket surcharge, and new taxes on player salaries and on luxury-suite sales. Unlike the earlier bill, it does not include money to expand Indianapolis' convention center into the site occupied by the Colts' current stadium - even though that was supposed to be the point of this whole exercise to begin with.

In terms of public cost, there are some promising features to this proposal compared to the last one - the ticket and luxury-suite surcharges, for example, would be expected to largely come out of the Colts owners' bottom line. (If you need an explanation of why, leave a comment below and I'll try to explain it.) Still, with the stadium alone carrying an expected $687 million price tag, there's still bound to be plenty of cost to go around.

February 23, 2005

Kings deal really most sincerely dead

Backers of the land-deal-based plan to fund a Sacramento Kings arena officially stuck a fork in it today, explaining that they couldn't come up with enough private money to make it work. (Surprise, surprise.) "The Kings may be history in Sacramento. I really feel that way," wailed former councilman Jimmie Yee, one of the plan's backers. "Arco Arena is only good for another five years." In five years, Arco Arena will be 22 years old, which seems a bit young to be sent to the carousel.

Supremes mull eminent domain

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in Kelo v. City of New London, Conn., a landmark case challenging governments' seizure of private land by eminen domain to make way for private developments. (Eminent domain is generally limited to projects for the "public good," but courts have allowed local officials to interpret this to include economic development of "blighted" areas.) If published comments are any indication, the justices seemed pretty tough on the plaintiffs - at one point Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined weirdly that "more than tax revenue was at stake, the town had gone down and down [economically]" - but trying to guess verdicts based on case comments is a fool's game, or at least one I'm not qualified to play. A ruling is expected in June.

The one thing that's clear is that a ruling against eminent domain use for private projects would have a huge impact on stadium projects, including the Nets proposal in Brooklyn (which would evict an entire block of homes) and the planned Washington Nationals stadium, which would wipe out a number of small businesses. One land-use attorney told the Washington Post that the "ultimate impact [for D.C.] could be that condemning private property for baseball doesn't meet the Supreme Court's ruling on what are the standards of public use. ... That could grind to a halt the entire stadium construction and development."

Going once, going twice

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority officially opened bidding on its West Side railyards yesterday, amid increasing criticism that the deck is stacked in favor of the Jets. Said one real-estate consultant to Newsday: "It's as if they're selling a Hummer to the Jets but it's a Pinto to everybody else."

The latest bid for the site, yesterday's $700 million offer from the energy company TransGas, already appears doomed, as the company admits it doesn't meet the MTA's bid requirements and an MTA spokesman replied that "we will not entertain any non-conforming proposals." (Link here for New York Sun subscribers only.) There's no immediate word as to how Cablevision plans to adapt its offer to conform to yesterday's bidding rules.

February 22, 2005

Two birds, one stone, lotsa waiting

Washington, D.C. officials, trying to find ways of hacking away at the anticipated $600-million-or-so cost of the new Nationals stadium set to begin construction later this year, are looking at scaling back the size of the Metro station that would serve the ballpark. This, they say, would actually be a good thing, because the resulting logjam after games would force people to mill around and buy crap at the stores they hope will spring up around the stadium.

"Anytime you get a crowd of people standing around with nothing to do, that's good," economic development consultant Bruce Hoch told the Washington Business Journal. Yes, well, that's one way of looking at it.

Vikes stadium land going, going, gone

The Minnesota Vikings' stadium dreams could be back to square one, as the site proposed for a stadium in suburban Blaine is in the process of being sold off to developers. "The site is still there, but it's not going to be there very long," Blaine mayor Tom Ryan told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. "Everything is being bought up." Ryan said a stadium could still be wedged into the site if the legislature approves a funding bill this spring, but that doesn't seem likely to happen.

Bloombergian math

With the International Olympic Committee in town to evaluate New York's bid for the 2012 Olympics, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pooh-poohed critics of his $1.7 billion stadium plan, which would serve both the Olympics and the Jets. "There are always a handful of people that don't want it," said the mayor yesterday. "There are a handful of people that don't want particular venues. ... But generally, New Yorkers really are supportive of doing things."

Bloomberg's statements came one day after yet another poll revealed that a majority of New Yorkers oppose the stadium. Or, as the mayor would put it, "don't care about America."

In other Jets stadium news, another bid has been placed for the West Side rail yards, this one worth $700 million, seven times what the Jets offered. The bid doesn't appear to be that serious, though - TransGas Energy Systems execs say they only placed it to call attention to their foiled efforts to get a power plant built in Brooklyn (the bid would be conditional on getting the plant approved), and they're not even sure what they'd do with the site if they obtained it.

Finally, for all you America-haters out there with a color printer and some wheatpaste, there's a new guerrilla ad campaign afoot.

February 19, 2005

Los Angeles Angels of Sheboygan?

The city of Anaheim's case against the Angels' name change to "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" isn't going all that well - in addition to being rejected for a temporary restraining order, as was reported here last month, the city also lost its bid for a permanent injunction - but it's still pursuing the case, and that's peeving Angels owner Arte Moreno. And what does a sports team owner do when he's displeased with his public landlords? No, he doesn't bawl them out and tell them never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again. He drops hints that he's going to leave town, that's what he does:

Although Moreno said Thursday he remains committed to Anaheim, he also said he has been contacted by representatives of other locations interested in luring the Angels.

"Yes, people talk to us," Moreno said. "Obviously, we're in a lawsuit with the city of Anaheim. Why wouldn't everybody else around start thinking that we're in an old stadium and we're not happy?"

Of course, given that the Angels just signed a new lease when their stadium was remodeled in 1998, they can't actually leave before the year 2016. Hey, maybe by then Las Vegas will actually have its stadium ready.

Today on "As the Jets Turn"

I know sometimes this site has seemed like Field of Jets Schemes of late, but it's hard to stop when the stories just get more and more surreal. Take, for example, yesterday's developments:

With an International Olympic Committee delegation set to visit New York next week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has issued half a million new subway maps directing riders to proposed Olympic venues - including those, like the Manhattan Jets stadium, and the Brooklyn Nets arena, that don't currently exist. The maps also promise to confuse riders by directing them to a phantom beach volleyball venue on the Williamsburg waterfront, and a nonexistant archery range in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his weekly tirade against Madison Square Garden owners Cablevision, suggested that the company should really be fighting against his proposed Nets arena, not the Jets stadium: "That is their real competition - the stadium is not." Is this really the best time for Bloomberg to be opening up a second front?
The New York Times revealed that following Cablevision's surprise bid for the Jets site, two city deputy mayors, Dan Doctoroff and Marc Shaw, called MTA chair Peter Kalikow and urged him to reject it as "an act of sabotage." This, according to the Times, followed a prior dustup over the value of the MTA land that "ended with Mr. Kalikow storming out of the meeting room after stern words from Mr. Doctoroff."

I mean, this stuff is over-the-top even for stadium-fight shenanigans - though come to think of it, this is Sweeps month.

February 17, 2005

Chargers: Just the land, please

The San Diego Chargers have tweaked their new-stadium proposal, dropping an earlier request for $175 million in public infrastructure improvements. (It looks as if these improvements would now be paid for by a private developer via property-tax exemptions, costing the city the same, but the news stories on this are pretty unclear.) Instead, the team is focusing on the 60 acres of city-owned land near Qualcomm Stadium that it wants to be given for free, in exchange for building a new stadium with its own money.

But Donna Frye, the city councilmember who represents the stadium district, would prefer to see the land made into a public park. Or, failing that, the city should open up the site to competitive bids from developers nationwide. Hey, all the kids are doing it!

Zone defense

Okay, so maybe that open bidding process for the proposed New York Jets stadium site isn't so pen after all. Newsday subway columnist Rey Sanchez notes that the March 21 deadline announced by Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair Peter Kalikow gives would-be buyers barely over a month to assemble final bids; and further that since the Jets have been promised the site will be rezoned for development but no one else has, this will put other bidders at a huge disadvantage.

"With the city declaring that it will not entertain any rezoning of the site, and with silence from the state, which has the power to override city zoning, it is highly unlikely that any developer will bid on the site," wrote Regional Planning Association president Robert Yaro in a statement released yesterday. "Under these rigged conditions, the Jets may be the only bidder. This is clearly not a true open bidding process."

Cablevision's initial $600 million offer for the site included a provision that the bid was contigent on getting the same zoning that was offered to the Jets, but apparently that's no longer acceptable to the MTA: Authority spokesperson Tom Kelly told Newsday that offers conditioned on future zoning "will not be deemed responsive." (Translation: will be rejected out of hand.) Bidders will be allowed to make two-tier offers, he said, with a smaller payment initially and the rest to be paid once the property is rezoned. But he said it would be possible to make an offer, which includes an up-front payment and an additional payment when the property is rezoned. "Everybody that has a horse in the race can pick anything they want apart."

The Jets, though, would have a huge advantage here: Since state and city officials have already promised to rezone the land for a stadium, the team can bid as if the rezoning has already taken place. (While nominally a power of the city council, zoning can also by overriden by state authorities such as the Empire State Development Corporation, controlled by Gov. George Pataki.) Other bidders would be forced to either submit a two-tier bid, or roll the dice and hope that the site will be rezoned after the sale.

One way to level the playing field would be for the city council to promise to rezone the site regardless of who buys it, something that council speaker Gifford Miller has vowed to do in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg released today. (MS Word file downloadable here.) Unfortunately, the council can't rezone land without the approval of the department of city planning - which is controlled by the mayor's office. The only one with the power to unilaterally wave his wand and declare the land open for development, it appears, is the governor - which isn't exactly how I'd set up a democratic decision-making process, but then, nobody asked me.

As for Cablevision, it's still weighing how to respond to this latest wrinkle in the West Side land wars. We could know more next Tuesday, when the MTA reportedly will be issuing its official bidding rules for the rail yards.

February 16, 2005

Around the NFL

In NFL stadium-grubbing news that actually involves teams other than the Jets:

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson's plan to finance a new Colts stadium with legalized slot machines died an ignoble death when the slot-machine legalization bill was killed by a state assembly committee. There are plenty of other stadium funding schemes floating around the Hoosier State, but as nobody seems to much like any of them, either, this could be it for the Colts for this legislative session.
Speaking of states with lots of stadium-funding plans that nobody likes, the Minnesota Vikings have a new owner, football-player-turned-really-odd-investment-firm-owner Reggie Fowler. Gov. Tim Pawlenty welcomed Fowler by declaring that he didn't think the new owner would have any easier a time of it in stadium negotiations, while residents of Anoka County, the leading candidate to provide a Vikes stadium site, demanded a public referendum on spending public money on the project. I think a nice home-baked pie is more standard, but those Minnesotans do have their own funny traditions.
It wasn't bad news for every NFL team today: The New York Giants are reportedly making progress in their negotiations for a mostly-privately-funded stadium in the Meadowlands, one that could be more lucrative if the Jets can be lured into joining in on the project, either as a partner or as a tenant. The Jets insist that they're still focused on getting their own $1.7 billion stadium in Manhattan, but the disbelief is getting a bit hard to suspend.

February 15, 2005

MTA: Let a thousand bidders bloom

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has asked for final bids by March 21 from the Jets and Cablevision - and anyone else who might be interested in developing its West Side rail yards site. "Anybody that's interested in it can put in a bid," MTA spokesperson Tom Kelly told Reuters.

That's right - the competitive bidding process that seemed like a pipe dream when mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer proposed it two weeks ago is now a reality, after a topsy-turvy week in which Cablevision, owners of Madison Square Garden, shocked Jets stadium boosters by bidding more than three times what the football team had offered for the site. The binding arbitration that the Jets and MTA had envisioned at the beginning of the month is now likely to be abandoned; as the New York Times' Charles Bagli writes, with bidding now open to all comers, "to stay in the bidding game, the Jets will likely have to offer more than the $100 million they had planned to pay for the area."

The Village Voice's Tom Robbins, meanwhile, reports (in a story filed before the open-bidding announcement was made) that the Jets could have plenty of competition for the site:

[Former MTA chair Richard] Ravitch, who said he had no way of knowing whether the Garden's offer was sincere, insisted that if the site were placed on the open market it would bring legitimate bids far larger than that made by the Jets.

"If they really open up the process they will get a lot of proposals," said Ravitch. "And it will be a funny irony, because they will get a lot of offers from developers outside of New York."

Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, which has offered its own alternative scheme for the site, agrees. "There is enormous and vastly increased developer interest in the site just over the last few months," he said. Since the Garden's proposal made the news, developers have been calling in from outside the city, Yaro said. "I can't mention names, but there have been discussions with some of the biggest developers in the world."

The reason why only out-of-town developers would be involved: New York City developers, as reported yesterday, are reportedly afraid to show interest in the site, or speak out against the stadium, for fear of the mayor's office denying them permits for other projects in the city. (Ravitch recently referred to city developers as being "in the witness protection program.") "There is a reign of terror in this town," Yaro told Robbins, recalling his own group's battles with the mayor's office over its stadium stance. "The litmus test is 'Do you support the Olympics?' If so, then you can do business with the city."

Hacked

Sometime last night, Drizzle Internet's web server was hacked into, resulting in fieldofschemes.com vanishing for a few hours. Fortunately, the Drizzle staff were able to quickly restore everything from backups this morning, so all is back to normal now.

While I was able to recover all the news items, any comments posted yesterday are gone for good - if any of your words were lost, please feel free to re-post them. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm thankful this wasn't a lot worse.

Anyone with information regarding Bud Selig's whereabouts last night are invited to contact the proper authorities.

February 14, 2005

Friends in high places

Ever since Cablevision issued its $600 million bid for the proposed New York Jets stadium site, there has been much speculation about why, if it's such a hot property, other developers haven't joined the bidding. One possible explanation is supplied today by the New York Times' Charles Bagli:

Several Manhattan developers, who requested anonymity, said that that they would bid for the rights for the railyard if the M.T.A. conducted an open sale, but had so far refrained from doing so because they did not want to incur Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg's wrath.

"It's clearly valuable," said a major residential developer, who asked not to be identified. "But can anyone in my position say so on the record? Everyone, including me, is scared to cross him on this. I've got too many things cooking in this town" that require city approval.

If true, this means that Mayor Bloomberg would rather deny the city transit system a bidding war for its site - at a time when the mayor himself says the system is billions of dollars short in needed funding - than risk giving up his stadium dreams. (Concerned subway and bus riders can drop the mayor a message here.)

In other Jets stadium news, the mayor's charter revision commission officially turned down requests to put a stadium referendum on the November ballot. Told ya.

February 12, 2005

Plan 5 from outer space

Since the first four financing plans for an Indianapolis Colts stadium weren't doing the trick, there's now a fifth one on the table. Indiana state representative Mike Murphy has proposed diverting $28 million a year in income taxes paid by suburbanites who work in Indianapolis to help pay for the $687 million stadium. "It's a regional solution that doesn't raise any taxes," said Murphy. "I don't know how you can argue with this."

The Colts debate highlights a dilemma faced by politicians seeking to use public funds for sports facilities (or for anything else, for that matter): Do you propose a new tax, like Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson did with his legalized slot machine scheme, and brag that it doesn't drain the city treasury of any existing revenues? Or do you propose draining the city treasury, as Murphy would do, and make a pledge of no new taxes? You're either robbing Peter to pay Paul or robbing Paul to pay Peter, so your decision is probably best made by whether your audience is more perturbed by the threat of new taxes, or of reduced city services.

Draining the Colts' profits on the deal, of course, is right out. This is about "finding a horse to ride," remember?

Royals: We're staying put

The Kansas City Royals made it official yesterday, as owners declared they're not interested in moving to a new downtown stadium, and instead will stay put at Kauffman Stadium at least through the end of their current lease in 2014. "Our fans are overwhelmingly supporting us staying at Kauffman Stadium in the near future," said team president Dan Glass, son of team owner David Glass. "Most of the support for a downtown ballpark has come from people with a stake in downtown, not necessarily our fans." Added Royals VP Mark Gorris: "It just became clear that we were going to have a major division in the community by going forward."

A team of ninja assassins has been dispatched from MLB's executive offices to deal with the problem.

February 11, 2005

MSG: We'll pay $600M, taxes too

Cablevision's bid for the erstwhile New York Jets stadium site just rolled across my e-mail transom (you can read the press release here and the full letter here), and it contains some fascinating tidbits about how just much the Madison Square Garden owners are willing to pay. For example:

As previously reported, the MSG offer is for $600 million (including $250 million to deck over the rail yards). And while the New York Sun reported earlier this week that the $600 million would be paid off over time, giving it "a present value of as little as $60 million," MSG's bid letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority makes clear that "the net present value of these payments ... is anticipated to be $600M." In other words, if MSG delays any payments, they'll include interest.
While the Jets are insisting on not making payments in lieu of property taxes (or more specifically, intend to pay PILOTs to themselves to fund their own stadium costs), MSG is offering its bid "on the assumption that the development would generally be subject to real property taxes or to equivalent payments in lieu of taxes." The rail yards site has been previously determined (by both the Jets and the Regional Plan Association) to be worth about $400 million in present-value PILOTs.
MSG "will work with MTA" to determine how much of the site's development rights would be used by the apartment buildings it hopes to build there. (Part of the Jets' bid involves leaving about two-thirds of the development rights as unused "air rights" that the MTA could then resell, though there's some question about what market would exist for them.
The MSG bid "is not contingent on the No. 7 [subway] train extension."

In short, then, the MTA has two bids on the table: One from the Jets worth $100 million, with the city responsible for building a $375 million platform and getting no property tax revenue from the site; or one from MSG worth $350 million, with MSG paying for the platform, and $400 million worth of PILOTs flowing into city coffers. Even with the chance to sell surplus air rights as a sweetener to the Jets deal, it's going to be awfully hard for MTA chair Peter cash up front" Kalikow to reject this offer out of hand. Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have called the MSG bid "a joke" earlier this week, but I doubt he's laughing now.

February 10, 2005

The lords giveth, and...

The Florida Marlins have been promised that an All-Star Game in Miami is "very likely" - by 2013, anyway - if the team gets its requested $420 million stadium approved, according to team president David Samson. Meanwhile, the NFL is reportedly moving its annual televised draft out of Madison Square Garden, in retaliation for MSG's parent company Cablevision opposing a new stadium for the New York Jets. Don't sports leagues know how to operate by anything other than threats and brinksmanship? Oh, right, they don't.

Colts slots cash to come up all lemons?

It's just not the day for NFL teams with state legislatures: The Indianapolis Colts $990 million stadium/convention center project faces having its funding stripped by an Indiana house committee considering a bill to legalize slot machines in the state. A planned vote on the provision was postponed yesterday at the request of stadium proponents, but as slots-bill author Luke Messer of Shelbyville told the Indianapolis Star: "It can't be considered good news [for the stadium]."

Pols pile on Jets

Could that be ... the fat lady? Yesterday brought an avalanche of bad news for the New York Jets' $1.7 billion stadium plan, as three top state legislators threw roadblocks in the proposal's path:

State senate majority leader Joseph Bruno, an upstate Republican, told reporters yesterday he sees no need to make a decision on the stadium before the International Olympic Committee makes its choice to host the 2012 Games in July: "Some people ... are trying to use the time frames as pressure but that doesn't work." New York is currently considered a longshot to win the 2012 bid, and its stock is dropping.
State assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, agreed with Bruno that no quick decision on the stadium is needed, and went further than that, saying that if need be Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium could be pressed into service to host Olympic ceremonies: "I think New York is capable and flexible enough that there are enough facilities."
State senate deputy majority leader Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican, has added his name to the list of local politicians urging the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to open up the West Side rail yards site to competitive bidding: "That will assure the taxpayers and commuters they're getting a fair value," wrote Skelos in a letter to MTA chair Peter Kalikow.

With both Bruno and Silver holding veto power over the stadium through their positions on the Public Authorities Control Board, it's now all but certain that nothing will be decided for the Jets project before the summer.

Meanwhile, the growing clamor over the rail yards sale could come back to haunt New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, who's attempting a similar noncompetitive bid for Brooklyn rail yards where he wants to build his basketball arena. Skelos, in fact, specifically urged that competitive bidding be used for the Jets because of the precedent it would set for the Nets project. Could that be two fat ladies singing...?

February 09, 2005

Tigers to indie team: Stay offa our lawn

Never let it be said that the Detroit Tigers didn't learn anything from ten years of battling the Tiger Stadium Fan Club over their new-stadium plans: An article in Crain's Detroit Business (paid subscribers only) reveals that the Tigers lobbied members of the city council in nearby Troy to block approval of an independent-league baseball stadium there. The team also paid for an automated phone message from councilmember Jeanne Stine to Troy residents, urging them to tell their representatives to oppose the plan. Does anyone still wonder why proposals to put a minor-league team in vacant Tiger Stadium have gone nowhere?

Devils arena moves ahead, Giants not so much

The currently hypothetical New Jersey Devils scored one win last week, striking a deal with the city of Newark to build a $310 million hockey arena that would open in 2007. (I haven't been able to confirm just yet whether a city council vote is still needed to finalize the arena plan.) The city would spend $210 million in public money on the arena, and get back around one-third of its expense in rent payments and shared arena revenues; that may not sound great, but I suppose it's better than some of the alternatives.

(LATE NOTE: Just got word that the Newark council did approve the arena project last October, which snuck under my radar at the time. There's still a pending lawsuit over the city's end run around a public referendum; assuming the city clears that hurdle, arena construction is expected to begin this summer.)

The New York Giants of New Jersey's negotiations with the state sports authority, meanwhile, are going less smoothly, with the team and state still debating such issues as whether the planned Xanadu entertainment complex will be forced to shut on game days to make way for football fans to park. The Giants have said they will seek to sell naming rights to any new stadium, which they expect would pay for about $100 million worth of the stadium's $800 million price tag.

Finally, the New York Post reports that the Yankees are "90% of the way" to finalizing a stadium deal with the New York mayor's office, with the goal of having a Memorandum of Understanding signed before opening day in April. Of course, as the Jets have found out, an MOU with the mayor is no guarantee of legislative approval of funding for a project. (And as Brooklynites have found out, rumors of an imminent MOU and two bucks will get you on the subway.)

Deputy mayor for hairsplitting

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office has finally explained how diverting developer payments from the city treasury for a Jets stadium wouldn't be using "revenue streams that are currently supporting the city budget," as deputy budget director Alan Anders had promised the city council last year. Take it away, New York Times reporter Charles Bagli:

Although most Pilot payments flow into the city's operating budget, [city budget director Mark] Page said that he was not contradicting Mr. Anders's statement. He said that by 2009, when the first payment would be due, the Pilot payments would swell to about $70 million, from the current $47.6 million. The new money, he said, would pay for the city's stadium investment.

So there you have it: The city wouldn't be spending money that's currently supporting the city budget, because it's future money! With, like, Ronald Reagan on the tens.

Among those not buying this argument is city council speaker Gifford Miller, who issued a statement yesterday that "we'll take every legislative and other remedy available to stop the mayor from making an end run around the city legislature so that funds are not taken away from critical priorities like education and affordable housing." We'll see what that "every remedy" looks like; several political observers have suggested that the council could threaten to cut funding to the city Economic Development Corporation, the agency that collects the PILOT funds, if the mayor insists on using it as his personal slush fund.

LATE NOTE: Just heard that Bagli also reported (on TV, not in the Times) that the scheduled February 16 vote of the Public Authorities Control Board on the Jets stadium has been cancelled, given the increasing confusion over how it would be paid for, how much would be paid for land rights, etc. No new vote is scheduled, so it could be a while yet before state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver reveals his deciding verdict on the project.

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?

Red Wing ink

Another week of NHL lockout, another newspaper story claiming dire effects on the local economy. Today's contestant: The Detroit Free Press, which dutifully reports that a canceled hockey season would cost the city $153 million in lost economic impact, and $75 million in lost revenue.

Let's do what the Freep reporters didn't, and look at some numbers to see if the above claims - from the local chamber of commerce and a former Comerica Bank economist - make any sense. The Red Wings brought in $97 million in team revenue last season, so for the city to be losing $75 million would imply that every dollar earned by the Wings is taxed at 75%, which is patently silly. Let's assume, then, that the Freep writers don't know the difference between city tax revenue and local economic impact, and move on to the latter figure.

The typical way for an economist to estimate economic impact - i.e., the total amount of money that's spent in a region as a result of a certain activity - is to take the direct spending (the Red Wings revenues) and apply a "multiplier" to account for the fact that if I buy a ticket, that helps to employ a ticket agent, who then spends her salary on other goods, etc. Economists can give you all sorts of rationales for selecting a multiplier, but it generally comes down to "pick a number somewhere around 2."

There are all sorts of reasons to assume that sports multipliers should be much lower than for other industries, however. For example, let's look at that $97 million: $80 million of it went right back out to pay player salaries, and it's pretty unlikely that Red Wings players spent that all at local Coney stands. More likely, they spent much of it on their homes outside of Detroit, if not outside of Michigan entirely. This is what economists call "leakage," and it's vastly higher in sports than in other fields, if only because so much of team spending is focused on a handful of high-paid employees.

Sporting events involve non-team revenues, too, of course, mostly spending on concessions at the event (Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch owns the local concessions company, too, but it's not included in that $97 million figure) and at local restaurants and bars. Even there, though, one needs to take into account the substitution effect, whereby some fans are going to take their erstwhile hockey dollars and spend them elsewhere in Detroit. (Yes, there are a few elsewheres within the Detroit city limits. Have you forgotten the Coney stands so soon?)

In short, a few minutes' thought indicates that it's extraordinarily unlikely that the impact of the hockey lockout is anywhere near what's been reported in the Free Press. But then, nobody's paying our nation's newspaper journalists to think.

San Jose stadium would displace housing

San Jose's proposal to build a major-league baseball stadium doesn't have a funding plan or a team (while the Oakland A's are rumored to be interested, the San Francisco Giants control territorial rights to the city), but now it does have a bunch of angry neighborhood activists. Residents of the area where the stadium would be sited say they were in the midst of negotiations to build needed housing and a park on the site, when the city swooped in and decided to pursue buying it from its current owner. The neighborhood groups say they've been rebuffed in attempts to discuss this with Mayor Ron Gonzales; a mayoral staffer assured the San Jose Business Journal that there will be a "public process" regardless of what happens.

A programming note

From now on, this site's RSS feed will only provide brief excerpts of fieldofschemes.com news items. Apologies for any inconvenience, but it had just become too easy for other websites to reprint my work without permission. I may try to set up a password-protected full-text feed at some point; if you'd like to be notified when this is running, send me an e-mail.

(Note: If you have no idea what any of this means, then you're not using an RSS reader to access this website. So you don't need to worry about it.)

February 05, 2005

Let a thousand stadium plans bloom

Meanwhile, in that other football stadium/convention center expansion deal, there's now a fourth proposal on the table to fund an Indianapolis Colts stadium with public money. Unlike the first three, this one involves no slot machines. Instead, state assemblymember Jeff Espich proposed using a combination of increased income taxes, hotel taxes, restaurant taxes, and car rental taxes in Marion County, plus a player income tax surcharge and a $10-a-ticket stadium sales tax, to raise $109 million a year for the project. (The total price tag, including the convention center expansion, is now just shy of $1 billion.) Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson reacted angrily to the plan, insisting that increased taxes would hurt the Indianapolis economy (and Indy residents pumping their money into slot machines wouldn't?), though he fell short of accusing the state Republican party of opposing his stadium plan because Peyton Manning threw a football at their leader.

The Indianapolis Star also reports that Governor Mitch Daniels "isn't ruling out the possibility he will draft his own plan." Who's next, Linda Cropp?

MSG bid worth $350M?

A slight correction to yesterday's story on Cablevision's offer for the proposed Jets stadium site: The Madison Square Garden owners estimate they can deck over the site's rail yards for just $250 million, which would leave the Metropolitan Transportation Authority netting $350 million on the deal - $20 million more than what the MTA has asked the Jets for it.

Also, state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver made another negative statement about the stadium deal yesterday, telling Newsday: "The MTA is under a public and moral obligation to get as much money as possible for that site. If that land is worth $900 million by their own appraisal, it seems to me they should be under an obligation to get 900-some-odd million dollars." Silver is still officially undecided on whether he'll approve or veto the plan when it comes before the state Public Authorities Control Board a week from Wednesday, saying he still wants to see the city's financial plan for raising its $300 million share of the costs. Yeah, you and me both.

February 04, 2005

Cablevision: We'll trump Jets offer

I almost fell off my chair when I saw this one: Cablevision - owner of Madison Square Garden and devout foe of the New York Jets' stadium plans - has sent a letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority offering to buy the proposed stadium site for $600 million and develop it themselves. According to Crain's New York, which broke the story a few minutes ago, Cablevision would build a mixed-use residential community on the rail yards site, similar to what the Regional Plan Association suggested back in December.

The Cablevision offer isn't quite as lucrative as it at first appears: Part of the $600 million sale price would go toward decking over the rail yards, so the MTA would only net $225 million from the deal. (City and state taxpayers would save $600 million by not having to build the platform and stadium roof, but that's not the MTA's primary concern.) That's still more than double what the Jets are offering, though, and nearly as much as the $300 million the MTA says it's seeking.

(LATE NOTE: I just saw the actual Cablevision press release on this, which states that its $600 million bid is "an opening proposal should the MTA choose to begin an auction for the property," and so presumably could go even higher.)

If nothing else, MTA chair Peter Kalikow's line, repeated ad infinitum at yesterday's state assembly hearing, that the Jets offer is the only available "bird in the hand" just got much, much more complicated. And now that one unsolicited bid has been offered, who knows who else might get involved? Can you say Trump City South?

Domes spring eternal

February 1 was supposed to be the deadline for approving a publicly funded domed football stadium in Birmingham, but apparently they still go by the Julian calendar down in Alabama. State assemblymember John Rogers, in fact, is now saying he'll have funding in place for a March groundbreaking for a new stadium - and after that, he's going to pursue the Summer Olympics. For Birmingham. Alabama.

The $567 million stadium-and-convention-center project - those are really going around, huh? - is still short more than half of its needed funding. No word on whether the city would consider raising funds by selling naming rights to Vulcan.

Marlins, Miami re-agree on stadium

They're still short that $30 million in state funding, but the Florida Marlins did manage to strike a deal yesterday with Miami-Dade County on their $420 million stadium plan. (Yes, again.) The team and the county had already agreed on the split of funding - $192 million from the team, with the city and county kicking in $198 million plus free land - but county negotiators were holding out for a promise that the Marlins would cover all cost overruns. (The city and county will now get a lien on the franchise if it doesn't pay for any overruns.) The team still needs to get its plan approved by the city and county managers, and the city and county commissions, and of course get the state legislature to cover the $30 million funding gap. In other words, we're pretty much right where we were this time last year.

It happens every lockout

It's almost a cliche by now: The newspaper story about how the ongoing work stoppage in [name your league here] isn't just hurting players/fans/zamboni drivers, but is hurting the local economy as well. Today New York Newsday takes its turn at this one, dutifully reporting that "the National Hockey League lockout has rippled through the economy, a crushing body check on restaurant owners and hotel managers, parking attendants and ushers, vendors and security guards and a host of other workers and business owners."

Of course, nobody bothers to go interview, say, movie theater owners in Queens about whether their attendance has been up during this winter, as hockey fans seek other entertainment. Economist Andy Zimbalist shows up briefly at the end of the article to make this point that if sports spending goes down, spending elsewhere goes up, but the Newsday reporters don't seem to have gotten it - they nonetheless report uncritically that the lockout has cost "nearly $100 million to date for the region."

February 03, 2005

No way to run a railroad

As someone said to me following this morning's state assembly hearing on the proposed New York Jets stadium: "Brodsky runs a good hearing, doesn't he?" Though technically a hearing of the assembly's public authorities committee, the day's event was mostly a two-hour grilling of Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair Peter Kalikow by committee chair Richard Brodsky, on the topic: Why on earth is the MTA agreeing to accept between $35 million and $300 million from the Jets for a parcel that its own appraiser says is worth $930 million?

Kalikow has played a weird role in the stadium debate, alternately boosting the project and insisting that he won't let the Jets get off cheap. At today's hearing, he presented an image of a man squirmingly aware that he's serving two masters: a mass transit system that's billions of dollars in the hole, and a governor who appointed him who just wants to get this stadium done, never mind the details. And while he delivered all the appraisal documents that Brodsky had subpoenaed last week, it soon became clear that a lot of details are still very much up in the air. Let's go to the highlight reel:

BRODSKY (addressing the issue that the MTA land must be rezoned before the stadium can be built, or excess development rights can be sold off): How soon could you get a rezoning if you sought it?

KALIKOW: I don't know.

BRODSKY: Is there a ULURP [land-use procedure] component to the zoning process?

KALIKOW: I don't know.

BRODSKY: Has anybody tested the market for the transfer of development rights in that amount in that area? Does your appraisal do that?

KALIKOW: I don't know.

BRODSKY (later): Whose idea was it to go to arbitration?

KALIKOW: I actually don't know. It just kind of came up.

BRODSKY (later): Suppose the arbitrator comes back with $35 million, which is what the Jets think [the parcel is worth]. ... You'd take the $35 million and go home?

KALIKOW: I wouldn't be happy about it, no.

BRODSKY: I didn't ask you if you'd be happy about it. Would the board be bound by the arbitrator's decision?

KALIKOW: The board has to decide what it will and will not be bound by.

And so on. Where things got really juicy was when the committee members began pressing Kalikow on why the MTA was pursuing this odd tack of going to arbitration with a single developer to determine the value of its land. Brodsky first pointed out that the MTA could easily find out the land's fair market value by having the city condemn it, which would result in a well-established public process for determining a price. (Arbitration, suggested Brodsky, was by comparison more like Big Julie's craps game.) Then Assemblymember Richard Gottfried raised the issue of opening up the process to competitive bidding:

GOTTFRIED: Why would you not say, we're going to go out to the marketplace and do a [request for proposals], and see what developers would pay for the privilege of building on this site? Why would you not do that?

KALIKOW: If I build a condo, if a guy comes and says I want to buy 20 apartments cash up front, I do it every time. It's called hedging your value. In addition to that, we are relieved of the responsibility of building the deck.

Kalikow came back to this point again and again: The current Jets proposal is a good deal for the MTA because the city and state, not the MTA, would be paying the cost of decking over the site's rail yards. In effect, the city and state governments are offering the MTA a $375 million - "bribe" is such an ugly word, let's call it an "enticement" - to hand over its land to the Jets, and not another developer. While not technically a subsidy to the Jets - it would, in effect, be a public subsidy of the local transit system, which is arguably a good use of city and state dollars - it's still awfully odd public policy for one government body to be paying off another in order to free up land for a private football stadium.

Some other questions that were answered, or not, at today's hearing:

Contrary to published reports, the binding arbitration has not been officially agreed to yet, and won't be until the MTA board meets to approve it. (Kalikow couldn't say when that would be.)
"Air rights" can generally only be sold to developers of adjacent parcels, presenting a problem for the Jets stadium site, which is surrounded on three sides by the Hudson River, the Javits Convention Center, and another open rail yard. Kalikow seemed convinced that the MTA could sell its air rights to developers anywhere in the greater Hudson Yards district, but several people in the room insisted that that would require another zoning vote by the city council - which could leave the council forced to undergo another months-long zoning approval procedure, or else leave the MTA stuck holding a $600 million bag. (The Jets would already have gotten their stadium, though.)
Kalikow insisted that the Jets would be responsible for any cost overruns on decking over the yards; Brodsky insisted the available documents say the state would be stuck with the cost.
The Brooklyn arena plan to lure the New Jersey Nets, revealed Kalikow, is "on hold" until the matter of the Jets land price is resolved - presumably because the MTA plans to use a similar appraisal process to determine the value of its land that would be used for part of that project.

Generic headline

The wheels continue to come off the latest Sacramento Kings arena plan, as landholders in neighboring North Natomas who had been asked to fund an arena in exchange for having their land rezoned for development now say they can't pay what the Kings are asking. Instead, they could devote the money for a fund to build what the Sacramento Bee is calling a "generic sports facility" - or maybe youth sports, or arts funding. Look out! Wheel!

Plan B for Jets?

For the first time, the New York Jets appear to be looking at a fallback plan in case their Manhattan stadium plans fall through. The Newark Star-Ledger's Matthew Futterman reports that Jets execs will meet with New Jersey stadium officials next week, and the agenda will include dealing the Jets in on ongoing stadium talks with the Giants. A Jets spokesperson insisted that the talks are only meant to discuss pending litigation over the Jets' rent payments at Giants Stadium.

Meanwhile, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez takes on the West Side rail yards sale price again today, noting that while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed deducting the value of unused development rights from the Jets' bill, standard real-estate practice is to charge developers the full land price, then let them sell any excess air rights themselves. "That's totally out of line with conventional development practice," Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association told Gonzalez. "[Sale of air rights] would be a risk assumed by the proponent of a project." If the air-rights deduction is counted as a subsidy, this would bring total taxpayer dollars for the Jets stadium to $1.25 billion - and if arbitrator George Mitchell rules in favor of the Jets in the land dispute, the public price tag could go as high as $1.45 billion, easily breaking the Big Owe's record as the biggest sports boondoggle in history.

February 02, 2005

Spanning the globe

News has been piling up while I focused on the New York Jets stadium controversy, so it's bullet-point time today, with news items from three sports and two countries (including, inevitably, still more Jets news):

At a Salt Lake City council hearing last night, the Real Salt Lake expansion soccer team revealed that they're considering adding - no, seriously - a retractable roof to their proposed stadium, lifting the price tag from $60 million to $90 million. (Unless I'm mistaken, this would be the first 20,000-seat facility on the planet with a flippable lid.) Council members also learned that the cost of the land for the stadium would likely be $20 million - so with the city being asked to pay for all land costs and half of construction costs, that could leave taxpayers on the hook for $65 million, or five times what the team itself cost its owner, former NBA exec Dave Checketts.
Lewis Wolff, the real-estate developer who's in the process of buying the Oakland A's, says his first priority will be getting a new stadium built, preferably in Oakland but elsewhere if necessary. (Since Wolff only wants to put up $100 million of the stadium cost himself, this might be a tough one to accomplish, unless some former D.C. councilmembers decide to move to the East Bay and run for office.) Contrast Wolff's remarks with those of Kansas City Royals owner David Glass, who repeatedly stated in an interview with the K.C. Star that a stadium was not his team's top need: "If a downtown stadium doesn't happen, we will be playing baseball at Kauffman Stadium. Our lease runs through 2014, and right now we intend to play baseball there. ... We would have no problems with playing at Kauffman Stadium through 2014 and beyond that. The Royals aren't going anywhere."
The New York Jets have introduced a "scaled-down" version of their $1.4 billion stadium proposal, mostly by lopping off the wind turbines that were formerly going to rise above the building's roof. (The turbines were a key element of the Jets' claims that the stadium would be a "green" building, but everyone seems to have forgotten about that by now.) There's been some speculation that the Jets might be trying to reduce the building's bulk to convince arbitrator George Mitchell to reduce their land costs - for his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared that while the MTA "should drive as tough a bargain as they can," they "should complete a deal because without that, they're not going to have the money, and we all know how badly we need those monies." So let me get this straight: The Jets are the only possible buyer in the market for the site's development rights, yet the MTA is expected to sell the excess development rights to raise the $600 million in land value that the Jets don't want to pay? Somebody failed Logic 101 here...
New York Post columnist Eric Fettmann says a voter referendum on the Jets stadium would be a copout, since: "That's why we choose a mayor — to use his or her knowledge, judgment and experience to make those tough choices. That's what being an executive is all about (besides, it's not as if the issue is Bloomberg's to decide all alone, with no other governmental input)." Er, actually, Eric...
The Los Angeles Dodgers have suspended work on seismic improvements to Dodger Stadium, insisting that the current building is "seismically safe and responsible." The stadium does meet all current city building codes, but as one seismologist told the L.A. Times: "If you owned the stadium, you'd sleep better if you took care of it." Chalk this one up to Dodger owner Frank McCourt's rumored money woes, to lingering thoughts of abandoning the ballpark for newer digs, or to simple stinginess.
Rogers Communications, owners of the Toronto Blue Jays and the SkyDome, have announced that the building will henceforth be known as the Rogers Centre. (No sniggering, Britons.)

February 01, 2005

Jets appraisal follies

I know, I know, it's not even tomorrow yet, but the New York Jets stadium story is busting out all over:

The Jets and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released their competing appraisals of the stadium site today, and while I haven't seen the documents themselves, Newsday provides some details: The entire difference between the MTA's $330 million price tag and the Jets' $100 million one, it turns out, is that the Jets want to deduct the cost of the platform that would support the stadium over the West Side rail yards. (Actually, deducting the platform would leave the Jets paying a mere $37 million, but they obligingly offered to round up to the nearest hundred million.) Given that the city, not the Jets, would be paying for the platform, this seems an especially crack-addled argument, and clearly would amount to another huge subsidy if the team gets its way.
The honor of deciding the crack-addledness of the numbers goes to former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who was chosen today to arbitrate the land value dispute. Both sides have agreed to abide by Mitchell's decision, though either side will have a rather large incentive to just walk away from the deal if it doesn't get the price it wants.
Speaking of incentives to walk away, Newsday has this fascinating tidbit about the appraisal: "The MTA's appraisers also concluded that the 'highest and best use' of the waterfront land was construction of residential buildings with shops on the first floor." Man, no wonder Peter Kalikow didn't want anyone to read this document.
No web link yet, but an e-mail from mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer's campaign calls for the city to subject the rail yards site to competitive bidding, in order to "get the best price for the people of New York." Now there's a novel concept.

One hopes that state assembly leader Sheldon Silver is keeping up with all his newspaper subscriptions this week...

Some people say not to worry about the air

Remember yesterday, when I said that the $625 million New York Jets subsidy figure "requires lots of assumptions"? One of those is that the Jets would only have to pay for about one-third the actual value of the rail yards where the stadium would be built - $300 million, according to the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority - because the parcel's unused development rights could be sold off to owners of neighboring properties.

(Yes, in New York City if you own a property that hasn't been built up to the legal maximum, you really can sell off "air rights" to your neighbors, so they can build more than zoning laws would otherwise allow. Since the Jets stadium would only count as a bit over 2 million square feet of development - no, I have no idea how the city counts "floor space" of a football stadium" - that would leave another 4 million square feet of air rights to be sold off, raising, according to the MTA, about $600 million.)

There's one small catch to this plan. To sell air rights, the MTA would need a buyer, and as Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez points out today, "the city itself already has plans to sell scads of extra air rights in the adjacent Hudson Yards project to developers." If the air-rights market gets glutted, the MTA could end up having to eat part of the value of the land - and as Gonzalez points out, "for every dollar the MTA fails to get for the real value of the those rail yards, that's one more dollar it will need from subway riders."

Depending on how much of the unused air rights the MTA can recoup, then, we're now up to a public Jets subsidy of somewhere between $625 million and $1.2 billion. At least until tomorrow, when who knows what surprises may await?