Downtown must emerge from stadium shadow

And they all will live happily ever after. The Mets get a new stadium, Mayor Mike gets to cut some ribbons in Queens and the Olympic face is saved.

Then there's Ground Zero, the ugly child who seems to remind adults of something they'd rather forget. As the limelight moves on, it is in danger of being shunned into the shadows. Again.

You have to admire the way Bloomberg and his crew quickly regrouped after their West Side stadium debacle and hooked up with the Mets to reposition the Olympic grovel. And the Mets owners demonstrated more comeback ability than their baseball players by negotiating in one weekend a deal that had eluded them for years. It all shows what government and the private sector can do together in an emergency.

Unfortunately, the episode also provides an unflattering comparison to the sluggish confusion that has marked the rebuilding of Ground Zero and lower Manhattan. The failure to resolve the future of one of the most sacred sites in America is a disgrace. And now that the emergency for the Olympics has passed, will it be neglect-as-usual again downtown?

As Queens resident Joseph Passaretti - responding to Bloomberg's claim that the stadium defeat meant "we let America down" - said in a letter published in the Daily News: "Mike Bloomberg let America down ... because after three years as mayor, there is still that big hole in the ground downtown where the mighty twin towers once proudly stood."

Passaretti has his priorities exactly right. The greatest outpouring of American support for New York had nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with 9/11. But the problems of lower Manhattan have festered as Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki turned their attention elsewhere. And the media and the public allowed them to get away with it.

Indeed, Ground Zero has broken into the headlines for only two reasons: one, because belated security concerns forced a redesign of the Freedom Tower and, two, because Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver used his veto power over the stadium to shine a light on the area.

With the attention on him, Silver invoked a "moral obligation" and reminded us of how downtown has 67,000 fewer workers than it had and how Bloomberg was offering greater incentives for companies to move to the West Side.

Because he needed Silver's vote for the stadium, Bloomberg suddenly paid attention. He opened the vault to offer a king's ransom of incentives to lure jobs to lower Manhattan and even talked of a slowdown of the West Side development. As Silver noted, "It's unfortunate if the vote on the stadium is the only thing that may get them to focus on" downtown.

Had Pataki and Bloomberg paid attention to lower Manhattan all along, they might have had their West Side stadium. Instead, they had to settle for the Mets in Queens and lost the Jets in Manhattan. (That Jets owner Woody Johnson burned at least $50 million is a cautionary tale for any gambler caught in a political crossfire. But don't cry for him. The superrich Johnson won't miss a meal.)

The talks Silver forced about downtown ended with the stadium vote. A City Hall aide says the offer of a West Side slowdown presumably is off the table, though more help and incentives for downtown could still emerge.

Emerge they must. Baseball stadiums, and mayors, come and go. Ground Zero is forever.