Editorial

Silver must deliver
stadium to New York

We admit to being deeply distressed that the vote on building a West Side stadium and convention center was postponed yesterday, but we also harbor hope that Monday the sun will shine on a deal that brings construction crews that much closer to work.

Cockeyed though we may be, we find grounds for optimism in the fact that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver entertained proposals by Mayor Bloomberg aimed at persuading him to give his nod to the project. The speaker will mull them over the weekend in advance of another scheduled vote of the Public Authorities Control Board.

Silver made clear what he's looking for two weeks ago when he called for a Marshall Plan for lower Manhattan. He wants the city and state to offer dramatically increased financial incentives to companies that relocate downtown, notably to Ground Zero. All of which has only one thing to do with building a facility that would be a home for the Jets, a Javits Convention Center annex, cornerstone of the city's bid for the 2012 Olympics and a boon to the taxpayers.

And that one thing is that Silver has the power - and, he has convinced the world, the will - to block the stadium, regardless of its many benefits, unless his demands are met. It is - how shall we delicately put it? - distasteful when officials conduct business in a way that seems to require the services of the police hostage negotiating squad. But much gets done in Albany via ransom note.

So Bloomberg delivered his parcel to the drop as instructed and now awaits a call. Chief among its contents are likely to be the immediate elimination of the commercial rent tax at Ground Zero and a phase-out of the tax for the rest of lower Manhattan over a period of years. That would be just fine with us, as would offering other reasonable incentives for development.

Pray that Silver is satisfied and that the city, through an unnecessarily rough process, achieves a win-win: a stadium for the West Side and a more hospitable business climate downtown. He must not vote the stadium down or try to crimp development in the fallow neighborhood that surrounds the site. Still to be heard from: Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, who also has life-and-death power over the stadium. Ugh.