Legislative leaders continued to express strong doubts yesterday about a proposal to allow the Jets to build a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan using public money, while the Pataki administration called for a vote on the matter in two days.
Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican leader of the State Senate, complained that he still lacked information about the proposal, observed that the stadium plan was unpopular with many New Yorkers, and questioned why the stadium could not be built solely with private money. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, continued to express concerns that the office space to be built as part of a broader plan to transform the area around the stadium would compete with office space to be built in Lower Manhattan to restore the area after the Sept. 11 attack.
And both men have said they are awaiting a judge's ruling - expected today - on a lawsuit seeking to block the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's pending sale of development rights for its West Side railyards to the Jets.
But even as the legislative leaders continued to express their misgivings, the Pataki administration called for a special meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board - a little-known state entity made up of appointees of Mr. Bruno, Mr. Silver and Gov. George E. Pataki - to decide the fate of the stadium tomorrow afternoon. The board has the power to approve the $300 million in state subsidies for the project or kill it.
Whether tomorrow's vote will prove to be the decisive showdown, though, is unclear, officials said. The Pataki administration has scheduled votes on the stadium twice before, but then postponed them at the request of the two legislative leaders.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor Pataki are warning that if the stadium plan is not approved soon, New York's hopes of being selected as the site of the 2012 Olympics will be dashed. But Mr. Bruno said he would assure Olympic officials that if New York was chosen, he would authorize a West Side stadium. Mr. Silver has also said he would authorize a stadium, but has not specified where.
Mr. Bruno said at a news conference here that he would base his decision on whether to support the stadium on three things: the workability of the business plan, the outcome of the litigation and popular sentiment toward the plan. He complained that he kept getting different numbers for the amount of the public investment in the stadium, so it was difficult to say if the plan made sense. He also said that many people in New York City, and even more elsewhere in the state, have told pollsters that they oppose the stadium.
Mr. Silver said in an interview that he was still concerned that the plan to redevelop the West Side of Manhattan, of which the stadium is a centerpiece, calls for the construction of 24 million square feet of office space, which could compete with new office space in Lower Manhattan. "I don't know how you get around it," he said.