And speaking of stadium plans that seemed all but dead coming back to life, NYC F.C.‘s stadium campaign, last seen sinking beneath the waters of a squabble over parking spaces with the soccer team’s part-owners the New York Yankees, got jump-started this weekend when mayor-elect Eric Adams said he wants to re-open stadium talks:
“With their first-ever MLS Cup victory this year, NYCFC did our city proud, and gave all New Yorkers reason for hope,” Adams told The Post. “My administration will re-engage in discussions to explore the possibility of siting a new soccer stadium to serve as a permanent home for the team.”
That’s pretty vague, though the New York Post, citing “sources,” said sites being considered include not just the latest one replacing a Yankees parking garage (and an elevator company headquarters, and a street, and a highway on-ramp) but also “another Bronx site” and the previously rejected Willets Point site in Queens near the Mets‘ stadium. And Adams, who is tight with (and received large sums of campaign cash from) real estate developers, has proposed even further afield locations in the past:
I want to bring a #worldclass #soccer team to #Brooklyn and a new stadium. Why build in Belmont when you can go to #Brownsville or #BedStuy?
— Eric Adams (@BKBoroHall) June 4, 2015
As several people responded on Twitter, there isn’t exactly room for a soccer stadium anywhere in the Brownsville or Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods — but Adams is a longtime advocate of the idea that new development can lift up the economic fortunes of low-income residents, so it’s not surprising when he name-checks as many neighborhoods of color as possible. (Never mind that Bed-Stuy is increasingly gentrified and white.)
Yankees president Randy Levine chimed in on a similar note, asserting to the Post that outgoing mayor Bill de Blasio “at the last minute walked away from a deal that would have provided $1 billion in private investment in one of the poorest communities in the city.” (Actually, no, Levine and private developer Maddd Equities demanded to change the terms of the lease deal they themselves had written, but Levine has always had a difficult relationship with the truth.) It sounds like if nothing else, the Yankees and NYC F.C. owners are about to have someone in City Hall who is more concerned about how to build new stuff than about how it gets paid for, which is the best friend that a sports team owner can have.
Good to see Adams has his priorities right… right at the top of the list a stadium for a professional sports team owned by two of the richest sporting entities in the world that can (and in some circumstances, have) privately fund their own facilities.
Obviously New York has no other issues to manage.
Gotta hand it to the MLS cup commentators the first thing they spoke of after the win was “maybe this will finally get them a stadium”…
You don’t need to worry about their being ‘room’ for a stadium in any of the communities mentioned. So long as there’s housing for poor people that can be demolished to make way for a billionaires’ playground, real estate will never be the main issue.
Right on! Let the poor eat cake — in their PSL seats!
Question. I am not a New Yorker but I was in Bed-Stuy in the summer. It seems less like a low-end neighborhood but more like a transitioning neighbor. You know up and coming but not blatently gentrifying. Very similar to what you see in many neighborhoods around the country. (Grand Grovois area in St. Louis comes to mind) Is this a fair characterization? New York perspective please
It depends on which part of Bed-Stuy. The western end, nearer to Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, has been all wine shops and juice bars for years now. The eastern end, closer to Brownsville, has been slower to turn over, since it’s seen by people with money as less desirable.