Bloomberg's Three Questions

On June 16, 2005, the day after the New York Yankees and city and state officials held a press conference to announce plans for a new $1.1 billion stadium project, I e-mailed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's press spokesperson Jennifer Falk with a list of unresolved questions about the mayor's proposed stadium deals for the Yankees and Mets. The questions, and their current status:

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?
STATUS: Several local news reports have implied that the stadiums would go through ULURP, which involves a months-long public review process. However, there has been no definitive word from the mayor's office, and as Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York points out, a state agency could still step in and override local land-use regulations.

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?
STATUS: Yankees officials told the Daily News that the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority would spend about $90 million to build a new Metro-North commuter rail station and rebuild the existing 161st Street subway station (which the MTA just completed renovating a year or so ago). The mayor's office has not confirmed this, nor has it revealed whether this is the full extent of public transit costs for either the Yankees or Mets plans.

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?
STATUS: On this, the key argument by the mayor for spending $490 million in public money on the new stadium projects, there has been no response from City Hall

If you want to play along at home, you can write the mayor yourself and ask him these questions, or any others that you might be wondering about. Please send copies of any entertaining or informative responses to threequestions@fieldofschemes.com.

Fieldofschemes.com is the companion website to Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit (Common Courage Press), by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. Since 1998, we have been casting a critical eye on the roughly $2 billion a year in public subsidies that go toward building new pro sports facilities.

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