Juan Gonzalez Column

May 24

10 reasons to spike football stadium

Mayor Bloomberg has begun to sound like some smarmy salesman desperate to force his West Side stadium deal on us all without allowing anyone to examine the fine print.

"Sign now or we lose the Olympics," Bloomberg shrieks all over town. "The future of New York is at stake!"

His dire warnings are echoed by his sidekick on this $2.2 billion boondoggle, Gov. Pataki.

Thankfully Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno are not easily bullied.

They control two of three votes (Pataki has the other) on the little-known Public Authorities Control Board, which must unanimously approve the stadium project.

The two Albany lawmakers say Bloomberg and Pataki haven't given them enough details about the stadium's costs and who would control its operation. They say there's no reason to vote before a state Supreme Court judge rules on several lawsuits challenging the stadium.

There are at least 10 good reasons why Silver and Bruno should vote no - or at least delay their approval:

1. Rebuilding lower Manhattan comes first. Silver is furious that Bloomberg has spent so much time and energy on the stadium and commercial development on the far West Side, while the rebuilding of Ground Zero and lower Manhattan has stalled.

2. It's not an Olympic stadium. To make the Jets football field suitable for track and field, the city would have to extend it over the West Side Highway. This would cost several hundred million dollars and would require a federal environmental-impact review.

3. Mass-transit riders shouldn't make Woody Johnson richer. The cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority has agreed to sell air rights over its West Side railyards to the Jets for only $250 million, despite its own appraisers saying the land is worth $923 million. With the recent fare increase and more hikes likely to come, that's inexcusable.

4. What's the rush? Neither Silver nor Bruno believes the stadium must be approved before the International Olympic Committee makes its decision on July 6 on the 2012 Games, and both have said if the city gets the Games, they will assure the financing of a stadium - somewhere in the city.

"I told the mayor the seat he occupied in Athens was occupied by a 'wet paint' sign the week before the Olympics began," Silver told me yesterday.

5. No one knows the full public price tag. Bloomberg and Pataki say they have only committed to $600 million, split equally between the city and state, for the stadium's platform and roof. But details of several other subsidies have not yet been revealed, and a group of 106 economists who opposed the stadium project said yesterday the public cost would be closer to $1.3 billion.

6. The benefits of stadiums are always more hype than real. The group of 106 economists, which includes both liberals and conservatives, predicted yesterday the new stadium "will not generate significant net economic or fiscal benefits."

7. What about the Amtrak tunnels? Two Amtrak tunnels run under the West Side railyards and across the Hudson River. When the yards were built in the 1980s, all blasting on the site was banned because vibrations were threatening the tunnels. Current plans call for blasting at two areas on the proposed stadium site, but Amtrak officials say they have yet to see or approve any specific plans for safeguarding their tunnels.

8. What about the City Council? It recently passed a law that forbids the mayor from using payments in lieu of taxes - money turned over to the city by developers that get government incentives - to fund the stadium without Council approval. The mayor says that's illegal. Until the courts decide, no city funding for the project can go forward.

9. The PSL ripoff. A provision in the current plans calls for the Empire State Development Corp. to sell personal seat licenses, or PSLs, for the new stadium - then pass the revenue on to the Jets, thus saving the team millions of dollars in sales taxes.

PSLs are a relatively novel revenue scheme. New stadiums now charge a one-time "license fee" to their season ticket holders just for the right to buy a ticket! Some PSLs cost as much as $5,000 per seat. So if you have four regular season tickets for the Jets now, you could end up paying as much as $20,000 just for the right to buy those tickets annually. The Jets so far refuse to say how many PSLs they plan to sell.

10. What kind of a football stadium doesn't have tailgating? The Jets claim most of their fans will come by train.