Playing for more time on stadium

BY MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

Whistle blown: Timeout on the West Side.

With the proposed West Side stadium on the verge of defeat and the city's Olympic bid hanging in the balance, Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki tabled yesterday's vote on the controversial stadium.

"We are going to postpone that vote until Monday and work through the weekend to see if we can satisfy all of the parties, each of whom have legitimate concerns," said Bloomberg on his weekly WABC-AM radio show.

"I believe that there is a way for us to get together," he predicted.

Bloomberg and Pataki, the stadium's top supporters, need the backing of both Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer) for the project to move forward.

The last-minute decision to pull the plug on the 2 p.m. vote followed an intense round of negotiations Thursday night and yesterday morning - mostly aimed at winning Silver's support. Bruno is much closer to giving the green light, three sources told The News.

Around 10 a.m. yesterday - less than three hours before Silver planned to discuss his vote at a press conference outside Ground Zero - the mayor urged Silver in a phone call to give negotiations "one more shot," sources said.

Silver agreed but insisted the vote be delayed. Minutes later, the speaker canceled his news conference, and the mayor made the announcement on his radio show.

Sources said there are essentially three issues on the table: the level of economic development incentives for downtown, the pace of commercial development on the West Side and the need for upstate economic development money.

Silver said yesterday the city's plan to create 24 million square feet of office space on the West Side would "create serious competition with the redevelopment downtown."

"I said the same thing today that I said two weeks ago and two months ago - somehow I was heard better in the 24 hours before the deadline."

A Silver aide confirmed that the West Side commercial development, as it potentially competes with downtown, is the "central problem."

A state source said Pataki believes Silver has "a valid point on development concerns."

For the city's Olympic committee, every hour of delay is agonizing. Monday's vote will coincide with the publication of a major report from the International Olympic Committee assessing the five finalist cities.

Bloomberg said yesterday the report will surely note that the stadium is a "very big problem" for New York. "But if on Monday we could announce that the stadium was going ahead, I think it would blunt most of the damage done," he said.