By Deborah J. Glick
Throughout the past month, I have been flooded with calls, e-mails and letters from outraged constituents who oppose the West Side stadium. Like me, they cannot understand how the mayor and governor can possibly justify placing the needs of a wealthy sports team above those of the residents whom they were elected to represent. When the mayor has claimed that the city has no money to build more schools, repair senior centers or address a myriad of concerns for residents, it is inconceivable that money is available to subsidize a home for a wealthy sports team.
Likewise, Governor Pataki has ignored a host of expenditures that could have greatly benefited the residents of New York City. The governor has slashed funding to the Tuition Assistance Program for college students, proposed huge healthcare cuts and taxes and has failed to provide funding to adequately address the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision. And after touting the Hudson River Park as a “preeminent park,” it stands unfinished and searching for funding as the city and state refuse to make any additional capital commitment beyond the initial $100 million each made, which apparently has been fully allocated. Regardless, they plan to throw away three times that amount on this stadium.
The bill proposed by Governor Pataki to expand the powers of the New York Convention Center Development Corporation is a thinly veiled mechanism to authorize the necessary financial maneuvers to funnel public money into building a stadium. The governor and mayor have repeatedly made it clear that the proposed West Side stadium and the expansion of the Javits Convention Center are inextricably linked in a package they call the “New York Sports and Convention Center.” Now the governor is pitching his bill as one that involves only the widely supported Javits expansion, not the wildly unpopular stadium proposal that he has always linked with the Javits plan. Yet, the purposefully vague language of the bill includes the stadium without explicitly saying so. Since the sponsors have repeatedly declared that the stadium will be used a majority of the time as convention space, the bill utilizes flexible terminology that can be used to accommodate future creation of a stadium without explicitly naming a stadium.
The original bill presented by the governor has numerous problems, which include: the elimination of oversight and audit responsibility by the state comptroller, limitations on full judicial review in order to allow the proposal to be expedited with little public discourse and the absence of land-use and zoning review of the Javits expansion proposal, to mention a few.
Recently, the Regional Planning Association’s report emphasized the fallacy of stadiums producing major revenues. Beyond the financial waste of precious taxpayer dollars and the fact that stadiums in other cities have only served as ongoing financial drains to municipalities, the stadium has logistical problems. As a lifelong football fan, I am quite familiar with the unique social nature of football. Unlike baseball, where fans receive handouts and socialize inside of the ballpark prior to the game, football fans join together outside of the stadium to tailgate before games. In this way, locating a stadium in Midtown Manhattan is completely antithetical to the culture of football and is bound to cause problems between fans and neighborhood residents. Furthermore, it is clearly a move that is unpopular with the fan base. Even casual listening to sports talk radio makes it clear that Jets fans are opposed to coming to Manhattan for games.
In addition, it is obvious that this expansion will even further strain the current electrical infrastructure, both for electrical power and solid-waste disposal. Surely, all this new development will require substantial new capacity, but there has been no mention of this by either the city or state administrations.
The mayor is attempting to sell the stadium project as an essential part of providing additional convention space for economic growth purposes. However, while the stadium would be located to the south, the longstanding need to expand the Javits Center in order to attract more convention business has focused on an expansion to the north, which enjoys broad support. In fact, the northern expansion would bring the convention center closer to various tourist attractions, like Circle Line and the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. In addition, the 42nd St. corridor provides closer connections to mass transit, and any transit improvements could be achieved at a lesser cost. The 7 subway line expansion should be straight across 42nd St.
It is clear that, in reality, the mayor’s ill-advised plan is largely driven by the administration’s inordinate commitment to the Olympics. The financing is akin to a pyramid scheme, which depends on the sale of air rights and increased real estate taxes to provide a revenue stream to back the bonds to generate the construction dollars. Therefore, the financing scheme will necessarily force the city administration to focus their energies on ensuring that the commercial space is filled, which will be in direct competition with the revival and redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. The sale of air rights will lead to the development of large high-rise commercial buildings, which many local residents reject.
The financials of this deal won’t stand up to analysis. To begin with, the estimated cost of this stadium to the public is, at a minimum, $600 million in scarce taxpayer dollars, though estimates several years ago were $800 million to $1 billion. How we have achieved a 20-to-40 percent discount on the projected construction costs has never been adequately explained. Add to that the basic expense of the cost of lost homes, game-day gridlock, pollution and noise and one can see even the most superficial review reveals tremendous ancillary negatives inherent in this proposal. None of this takes into account the massive expense of extending mass transit into the area. While I support more mass transit, again, it makes more sense to improve transit along the 42nd St. corridor and expand the 7 line straight across 42nd St. Shockingly, Deputy Mayor Doctoroff has committed the city to pay for the $1.8 billion cost of the 7 line expansion.
In fact, the logic is flawed throughout the plan because the stadium is central to the administration’s development vision for the area and, without it, there is a gaping hole in the proposal. The Olympics is central to the stadium proposal and without the games, the stadium does not make sense. Most observers believe that it is highly unlikely that the International Olympic Committee will award New York City the bid. It is unfortunate that we weren’t put out of our misery in the last round of Olympic decisions. Few people have been willing to discuss if the Olympics are even a good idea for New York City, because Deputy Mayor Doctoroff has made opposition to the Olympics seem unpatriotic. The Olympic bid requires billions in infrastructure creation and upgrades. While stadiums have been clearly demonstrated to be poor investments, there have been a few examples of Olympic host cities faring well, either. The corollary, of course, is that many cities have experienced terrible deficits. Therefore, the administration’s projections for both the stadium and the Olympics are both enormously optimistic and highly improbable. The public would be better served to have the city and state commit a small portion of the dollars proposed for the stadium to create a recreational enhan-cement fund to improve various park venues, so that New Yorkers could enjoy some of the recreation facilities before 2013. These improvements would be substantially cheaper if they weren’t being developed to Olympic specifications. Our parks, pools, riding facilities, etc., could use updating, but not at the price of this ridiculous handout to a wealthy sports team. All of this adds up to a “house of cards” speculative scheme, which will leave the taxpayers holding the bag, while a few developers may reap some profits. The Assembly is working on a bill that would limit the expansion of Javits to a true convention center and hotel, without any stadium.
It is no wonder that there has been an outpouring of opposition to this stadium from all corners of the city. The residents of New York City will not benefit from this stadium and I will continue to stand with them to ensure that it does not happen.
Glick is assemblymember for the 66th District
