April 21, 2006
Old Yanks deal would have let city share revenues
Writing at baseballprospectus.com back in February, I admitted that the current New York Yankees stadium plan, no matter its flaws, was at least "a step forward" from the last one floated then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001, which would have stuck the city with half of the $800 million construction tab.
Now, though, I'm not so sure. That's because, while paging through the lease agreement signed by Giuliani and the Yankees in December 2001, I ran across a provision that in the new stadium planned at the time, the team was to share 4% of total home-game receipts (the lease actually says "Total Game Home Receipts" - damn budget cuts in the Department of Proofreading) with the city, along with 35% of net revenues from non-baseball events. Given that annual Yankees revenues are upwards of $200 million, that would have come to $8 million or more in rent payments a year - as opposed to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan, where the Yankees pay bupkis. (In Giuliani's plan as well as Bloomberg's, the team would be responsible for operations and maintenance costs, though not capital improvements.)
Add it up, and the lost Giuliani-era rent payments could have paid off about $120 million worth of stadium bonds - or just about the difference between Rudy's $400 million in public funds and Mike's $282 million in state and city subsidies. With hardball negotiators like these, who needs Yankees stooges?
