Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his staff have found a new site for a potential Olympic stadium in Queens, taken a new team partner for the project - the Mets, instead of the Jets - and gotten approving nods from officials who wisely rejected the ill-conceived original plan to put the structure on the West Side of Manhattan. The turnaround took just three days. If head spinning were an Olympic event, New York would take the gold.
It is commendable that Mr. Bloomberg decided against withdrawing the city's bid for the 2012 Olympics when his dreams of a Manhattan stadium were crushed at the last minute. But city officials and bid planners should have seen the light earlier, back when they were insisting that Manhattan was the only conceivable site.
While they were at it, they could have dropped the poker faces they put on as they maintained that a football stadium was needed to jump-start West Side development. Developers who have been lining up to get in on the action can only be happy that a stadium won't be there to ruin the view and quality of life.
Coming this late, it is impossible to know how the changes will affect the city's Olympic dream, which was a long shot anyway. Whatever happens, though, both the city and the state seem to get less of a soaking with Plan B. It calls for the Mets to underwrite the new stadium, which could cost as much as $700 million. The taxpayer contribution would be about $180 million, far less than the $600 million the Jets were demanding.
But even that smaller figure should be limited to paying for infrastructure improvements that benefit the public at large, not just the team. That shouldn't include subsidized parking that would be used for game days and not much else. If the Olympics do come, the cost of converting the baseball diamond into an 80,000-seat stadium would be mostly privately financed, but the city and the state would split part of the bill, some $100 million.
Perhaps the best part of the new proposal is that it will be put through the paces - including city budget approvals - that were skipped in the Manhattan project. In the end, New Yorkers just want a stadium they can all get behind.