The New York Daily News chimes in today on what’s been an ongoing debate about the Yankees‘ new stadium: Is the city really replacing as much parkland as was destroyed to make way for the new structure?
A recently discovered photograph of a baseball diamond just west of the old Yankee Stadium has reignited questions about whether the city is actually replacing all of the recreational parkland taken for the Bombers’ new arena.
The 2.89-acre parcel between 161st St. and the Macombs Dam Bridge approach was paved over in the 1970s, and served as extra stadium parking during the season, but was left open to the public for the rest of the year.
It will soon be the site of a parking garage for the new stadium. But the Parks Department did not include the asphalt ballfield in its calculation of the recreational park facilities the city must, by law, replace as part of the stadium project.
The crux of the debate, apparently, is whether the parcel was a parking lot being used as a ballfield, or a ballfield being used as a parking lot – and hinges on the city’s decision to lease the stadium site to the Yankees instead of following the more usual path of demapping it as park space. For more, see my Village Voice item.
In other Yankee Stadium deathwatch news, the website MarketWatch takes a look at the wall-to-wall media coverage of the stadium’s final game, and concludes that “the Yankees have used the YES network, which the team oversees, and the accommodating New York media to lead an orgy of sentimentality”:
Why aren’t more scribes and broadcasters vocal about pointing out why the Yankees’ owners are closing the Stadium? No, it’s not necessarily happening because the “big ballpark in the Bronx” (as Reggie Jackson likes to call it), has outlived its usefulness. I’ve attended enough games there this season to enjoy its splendor and conclude that there is no structural need to tear it down right now, either.
To be blunt, the team owners are shutting this Yankee Stadium because they can make a lot more money by opening a state-of-the-art baseball stadium/cum amusement park for fans who probably care more about being entertained than watching nine innings of baseball.
Well said, though MarketWatch would have a better case for the moral high ground if they themselves had ever ever mentioned the Yanks’ reasons for demanding a new stadium before now.