More on the October Surprise that helped provide cover for New York city councilmembers to vote for the Yankees stadium deal, courtesy of Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez:
The furor over the parks issue prompted [state assemblyman Jose] Rivera and Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) to get some last-minute improvements in the proposal. They include a commitment from the city and state to build a new Metro-North train station at the stadium to cut down on automobile traffic on game days; an additional $8 million for improving other neighborhood parks in the South Bronx, and a commitment by the Yankees to donate $800,000 a year for 40 years to local nonprofits.
But the biggest of these add-ons – the train station and parks improvements – are being thrown in by the city and state, not the Yankees!
“It’s one branch of government bargaining with another branch to save the Yankees project,” said a veteran Council staffer.
Given that this is the council that yesterday saw one member gush about how the project would mean “a $135 million investment in Bronx parks” – money that will go in part to demolish Yankee Stadium, in part to replace parks that already exist, and all of which will come out of the council’s own capital budget – you can’t say it’s exactly a surprise that the council speaker traded approval of a stadium for her own pile of magic beans.
If the Yankees building plan calls for the current Yankee stadium to be demolished, why can’t the new stadium be built on the footprint of the old one? This would seem to save the park space that will be lost under the current plan. I’m not that familiar with the plan, but is there a logistical or financial reason preventing the new stadium from being built on that space? Is the old stadium going to be demolished after the new one is built, so the team can continue to play there during construction? that’s the only reason I can think of.
Yes, that’s the reason. When Yankees president Randy Levine was asked by the city council last week why the Yankees couldn’t play at Shea for a couple of years, he said it was a “disaster” when they did so in the 1970’s; pressed what he meant by that, he replied, “Too much confusion – didn’t work.”
For the record, Yankees attendance actually went up the years they played at Shea, though it of course went still higher when they moved into the renovated Yankee Stadium:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/attend.shtml
That much touted press release about the Metro North station only says that the mayor & governor “support” the plan. It is not a part of the Yankee project. And who doesn’t support the plan? Everybody except the MTA. They haven’t weighed in on it yet.
The governor and the mayor control the MTA, so if they tell it to build a Metro-North station, it’ll build a Metro-North station. The bigger problem is where the MTA will find the money – it’s five-year capital budget is already set, so presumably it’d need to cut $20-50 million from some other project in order to build this.