Yankees Garages Can't Get a Break

The new Yankee Stadium is well under way, but the spiffed-up parking garages that are supposed to accompany it (and for which patrons can be expected to pay $25 for the pleasure of putting a car there) are having a hard time getting past the planning stage.

First, few private operators wanted to build them, and one that did saw action on its first proposal, submitted this spring, postponed while it got reorganized and renamed. This morning, the city’s Industrial Development Agency put off yet again a vote to authorize the cheap tax-exempt bonds that would make the $295 million project financially feasible. Chairman Robert C. Lieber, who is also president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said that delaying the vote until later in the month would give the agency a chance to provide more information to board members.

At the public hearing held last week on the garages, which would be built and operated by a nonprofit organization specifically designed to take advantage of the tax-free bonds, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, who has a vote on the IDA board, sent a representative to publicly request more information—a measure of just how hard it has been to get a hold of the information. The executive director of the IDA, Maureen Babis, said after today’s meeting that two documents that had been requested--the lease for the land and the feasibility study--had not been completed, but that if they were not finished by the time of the next vote, board members would receive enough information to make an informed choice.