'No progress' in Jets deal
BY BRYAN VIRASAMI AND JOSHUA ROBIN
STAFF WRITERS
June 6, 2005
Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent most of Sunday fruitlessly prodding Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to commit to a yes vote on the West Side stadium ahead of Monday's crucial state panel meeting.
The two leaders were nearly welded at the hip, noshing together in the morning, marching at midday in the Salute to Israel parade and huddling in late afternoon at a City Hall arm-twisting session.
But after the intense tete-a-tetes, including a session that forced Bloomberg to cancel a campaign appearance with the Independence Party, Silver left City Hall last evening reporting "no progress."
The lack of a deal left it increasingly likely that the Public Authorities Control Board's 3 p.m. vote could be postponed for the fourth time.
Silver, who has already secured $800 million in projects for his lower Manhattan district from the city and state, plans to talk with the mayor again this morning.
"It's a long way 'til Monday," he said, exiting City Hall, looking at his watch, at about 4:30 p.m. "I don't know if there's been any progress except for the fact that we're talking."
With an evaluation report of the five cities vying for the 2012 Games to be released tomorrow, the battle has taken on now-or-never immediacy -- which was obvious from Bloomberg's daylong wooing.
"He's a very smart person, and he can look at the clock like anybody else can," Bloomberg said of Silver.
The speaker has said he's concerned that building the complex might drain development from his district.
"Obviously, downtown is a priority for me," Silver said after two chat sessions with Bloomberg at a breakfast sponsored by Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. "It is not a matter of -- as some people have characterized it -- what do I want. I want his midtown vision not to hurt downtown. That's what I want."
For his part, the mayor pledged to "do everything I can to help rebuild lower Manhattan," as he told reporters after his third event with Silver, marching together in the parade on Fifth Avenue.
"Having said that, I also have a responsibility to the other parts of the city and to the people that live throughout this city and work elsewhere in this city," he added.
The proposed stadium is unequivocally backed by only one of the the board's three votes: Gov. George Pataki's. Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), the other vote, has, like Silver, been unenthusiastic about the stadium.
Last week, Bruno told the head of the International Olympic Committee that he would support the project should the city win the 2012 Games when the victor is announced July 6 in Singapore. A Bruno rep could not be reached Sunday.
Silver has made no such promise. He would support an arena in Queens -- an idea Bloomberg called "great" but impractical. The Jets have agreed to pay for only a Manhattan stadium, which would also serve as an expandsino of the Javits Convention Center.
