SILVER'S WASTELAND

Editorial

June 7, 2005 -- Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno yesterday killed Mayor Bloomberg's cherished West Side stadium — and with it, the most reasonable plan for reclamation of a vast urban wasteland to come along in years.

And they likely killed the city's chances for the 2012 Olympic games, too.

There's a lot of blame to pass around.

Silver made it clear that, at the end of the day, he is as small-minded and parochial a pol as any of the hicks and hacks he supervises as Assembly speaker. The stadium was, in his pinched view, a zero-sum game: The West Side's gain was Downtown's loss — was his district's loss that is, and so that was that.

Meanwhile, Bruno's son, Kenneth, was a principal lobbyist against the stadium,

Enough said there.

But it wasn't just Silver and Bruno.

Bloomberg and his chief economic-development deputy, Dan Doctoroff, made the Olympic games the centerpiece of their pro-stadium pitch — unwisely downplaying the overall economic benefits of developing the West Side site.

And Gov. Pataki has earned disapprobation on two counts:

* He never became fully engaged in the debate. The governor rhetorically supported Bloomberg, but never threw his weight behind his arguments. And at a key moment last week, he offered to mediate the argument between the lawmakers and the mayor — signaling ambivalence as to its outcome. That signal wasn't missed.

* Meanwhile, Pataki's Pit — the gaping hole that is Ground Zero — is not only the product of his overall lack of post-9/11 leadership, but it gave Silver a perfect excuse to oppose the stadium.

"We will be, shortly, four years after Sept. 11, and there is not a brick in the ground yet on Ground Zero," said the speaker yesterday.

In other words, if my district Downtown has to live with an ugly hole in the ground, then no one else in the city should see any development, either.

Now, Silver is known for his hardball bargaining. But is making all of New York suffer fair?

Besides, rebuilding at Ground Zero can go forward side-by-side with the development of the West Side.

And let's face it — development of the West Side is what the stadium debate is all about.

The plan called for extension of the No. 7 train into the area and the construction of upwards of 24 million square feet of commercial office space — all in all, a property-tax bonanza for a chronically cash-strapped city.

And yes, the Olympics figures into the picture.

New Yorkers aren't blown away by prospects of the games, but they would have represented a windfall both in terms of cash and prestige. (And don't forget the 2010 Super Bowl, now a pipe dream, as well.)

Ironically, an International Olympic Committee report yesterday essentially rated New York's bid equal to, or ahead of, all the other contenders.

Loss of the stadium changes that.

Alas.

The Jets were offering to invest $1.6 billion in New York City. They made only two requests:

* Give them something to build on — i.e., a platform over the Penn railyards.

* If the city and state wanted the stadium to be used with the Javits Center for indoor conventions, City Hall and Albany should chip in to put a roof over it.

These are legitimate requests — but even if they aren't, granting them would be a small price to pay for the tremendous economic boon the stadium would provide.

Now that's history.

How sad.