Jets: We’d boost not boot soccer

BY WIL CRUZ
STAFF WRITER

August 27, 2005

The Jets said Friday that if they built a new football stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park they would not only replace any parkland taken but also add a little fútbol to boot.

Team officials, who are eyeing a total of about 15 acres around the Fountain of the Planets in Flushing for a proposed 80,000-seat stadium, said Friday that they would replace four soccer fields that would be displaced and renovate the area just south of the fountain.

"I think there's a perception out there that we're just taking the fields and we have no intention of replacing them," said Matt Higgins, vice president of strategic planning for the Jets. "We want to go in the other direction; we want to embrace soccer."

To that end, Higgins said, the team is considering starting an expansion team that would play in the stadium and join Major League Soccer. The professional soccer league has already approved a new franchise, he said, but negotiations haven't begun in earnest.

Price tags for the proposed stadium, new parkland and even the expansion soccer team have not been determined, Higgins said.

Team officials met Tuesday with Queens elected officials, including Borough President Helen Marshall, in the latest bid in a 20-year effort to get Gang Green back in the city. The talks have been only preliminary.

The Jets also are negotiating to share a new stadium with the Giants in the Meadowlands. That deal isn't set in stone as the Giants planned to build a $750-million, 80,000-seat stadium, while the Jets have proposed a 90,000-seat facility that would include include retail and entertainment space.

Higgins said that while the talks with the Giants and New Jersey officials are further along, Queens was still in the picture.

"The rational thing to do if we had abandoned our plans to come back to New York would be to move on," he said. "But we haven't moved on.

"It's for real," he added. "It's not a leverage play."

The effort to build in Queens comes after a failed bid to put a new stadium on the West Side. While Mayor Michael Bloomberg backed that plan, the team has not discussed the Queens proposal with him. The deal also would need state approval for parkland to be used.

Jets officials have begun reaching out to Flushing residents in an effort to win their support, Higgins said.

Park-goers interviewed recently have said they want nothing to do with a new stadium -- new parkland or not.

David Oats, 55, chairman of the Queens Olympic Committee, which supports the Jets coming to the borough but opposes replacing the fountain with a new stadium, said he remained skeptical, even after being told about the team's proposals.

"I don't buy it; I will never buy it, and I don't care if they do that," he said, referring to the plan to replace every acre the Jets use. "This is a park and people use it. We don't want a stadium here."

Staff writer Steve Zipay contributed to this story.

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