There are plans aplenty to build new stadiums and arenas in the New York region, but will a single one ever be built?
Oh, you hear that this one or that one is close - close to construction starting - but the only sports palace completed since Continental Airlines (nee Brendan Byrne) Arena opened in 1981 was Arthur Ashe Stadium in 1997.
For good - but small - measure, throw in Icahn Stadium, the $40-million track and field complex on Randalls Island that opened last month.
It's not easy building the small joints, either. How long has it been since Harrison, N.J., emerged as a site for a soccer stadium for the MetroStars?
Seven years. You hear they may be close to getting it done now, but soccer may be the most popular spectator sport in United States before you see the stadium open its doors to take your money.
How long has it been since Fred Wilpon unveiled his retro-Ebbets Field design for the Mets? Seven years and 27 days. Haven't heard much about it since 9/11.
Nobody has pronounced it dead - design work is said to be continuing - but you have to wonder if José Reyes will finish his career in Shea Stadium. How about the new Yankee Stadium? Much more activity there. This one might really, really get built at Macombs Dam Park. Details of an $800 million ballpark that will evoke the original 1923 design are expected to be revealed within weeks.
The Yankees will finance it themselves and will be able to deduct its debt payments from the revenues they share with needy major league teams. The government money needed to build new garages, parkland, a MetroNorth station and ferry terminal could reach $300 million, but garage revenues are supposed to pay off the state bonds that will be used to finance their construction.
Think of how long this saga has been going on, and you start believing that Dickens had stadiums in mind when he wrote "Bleak House." An agreement in principle with the city was reached in 1986 to extend the Yankees' lease in the Bronx through 2022, but it unraveled. Then came the flirtation with moving to New Jersey, multiple plans to build in the Bronx and the proposal to build on the same railyards on the Far West Side of Manhattan where the Jets want to build their $2.2 billion stadium (and convention center).
Yes, the J-E-T-S. They know edifice envy. They played in Shea's swirling winds, then moved to a building named for the Giants. They have faced obstacles as daunting as the plagues to sate their need to cross the Hudson. The sign in Manhattan that flashes the rising national debt should be replaced with the upticks in the costs to the Jets' owner, Woody Johnson, who is rich, but is he this rich?
Everything that has held up this project should have been expected: lawsuits, protests and governmental horse-trading, especially when the state is expected to contribute half of the $600 million in public investment toward the project.
The current logjam is posed by the state's Public Authorities Control Board. It may vote next week to approve the project, as Gov. George E. Pataki is demanding, but the board members who control the only other votes besides Pataki's that matter, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, covet political pork in exchange for their pro-stadium votes. It is fascinating to see the change in the public profile of the board, which lacks the panache of, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles. A Nexis search found 40 references to it being "obscure" or "little-known," but if you refer to something as inconspicuous long enough, it becomes ubiquitous.
For the Jets, the nearly inert pace of stadium and arena construction in the metropolitan area has led them to start negotiating a 10-year, escapable lease extension at Giants Stadium, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported yesterday.
Several other projects might be finished, or could be derailed by lice, boils or locusts: the Nets hope to start building in Brooklyn in the fall of 2006; the Devils expect to take hockey (if the National Hockey League still exists) to a Newark arena in August 2007; the Giants, after wrangling and threats and lawsuits, think their $750 million stadium might be ready by 2009. But a plan by the Islanders' co-owner Charles Wang to renovate the geriatric Nassau Coliseum and develop the surrounding acreage is under political attack.
This is a hard business that has driven owners to distraction in their hopes of finding a truly luxurious luxury box. To paraphrase a recent statement by the Mets' television analyst Fran Healy: instant gratification is not something you will get immediately with a stadium plan in New York.
AIRWAVES
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