Yankee Stadium

 A strong and fond memory of being a kid and growing up in New York City was my first trip to Yankee Stadium. You came out of the tunnel that led to the stands and you looked up to see the beautiful blue sky standing in contrast to the white façade above the upper deck. Then your eyes focused downward and the field came into view—and it was the deepest green you could ever imagine. The Stadium really was an urban field of dreams. Recently, major league baseball decided that more than the field should be green.

Baseball is, in many ways, a preindustrial 19th-century sport. Its pace is slow, leaving lots of time for beer and relaxed conversation between pitches and between innings. This week baseball came full circle. Billy Crystal may have stuck out, but he was a Yankee for a day. And this week both the Mets and Major league baseball went green.

The Met’s new stadium, Citi Field, will be built using recycled steel, water efficient plumbing and other green principles.  read more »

If Yankees fans were paying as much as $150 for parking in the team's brief post-season, why wouldn't they shell out $25 ($29.60 with tax) for a regular game? That's the amount they can expect to pay after the Industrial Development Agency, a mayorally controlled board, unanimously approved $225 million in tax-exempt bonds Tuesday.

Some of the non-mayoral appointees had schimpfed about the lack of details in the plan a month ago. What changed? Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, who had earlier complained publicly how he was not getting any respect from the agency, said in a statement that he had received a “thorough and informative presentation by the New York City Parks Department, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the project team.” His representative, Rafael Salaberrios, walked in just after the vote but only because his train was late and he had his vote recorded affirmatively, according to a spokesman.

The lease—which will say just how much (or little) the city is going to make from letting a private operator build and run garages on its land—is still not complete, however, nor is the feasibility analysis, which will show just how well these garages will do financially and if they will be able to sustain themselves.

“It has redefined putting the cart before the horse,” said Bettina Damiani, project director of Good Jobs New York and a critic of the deal. “Details of the lease and feasibility of the project should always come first. It is more than disappointing to say that the board pretty much waved this through today without any serious debate.”

happened at Yankee Stadium last night, after the Yankees lost to the Indians 6-4 in the fourth game of the American League division series and the fans were filing mournfully out of the stadium?

George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' principal owner, who had tied Torre's future to the outcome of this series, was said to be fuming in his office and left without taking questions, ushered away by his daughter.

 read more »

The Yankees saved their skins—and by some accounts, their manager Joe Torre—when they rallied past a two-run deficit and Roger Clemens’ injured hamstring to beat the Cleveland Indians last night at Yankee Stadium 8 to 4.  read more »

No photograph ran with the online version of New York Post reporter Jeremy Olshan's story about the New York City Transit using barricades to block some ubway exits near Yankee Stadium.

The visuals are kind of essential to a) show how really bad an idea this is, and b) prove that it really happened.

So, here you go, courtesy of a well-informed reader.

The barricades, according to Olshan's story, have been removed. But still, how did they get there?

Hearings, anyone? 

Apparently, building a garage costs a lot of money these days, and it is hard to make it back if you are only open 81 times a year.

The city’s Industrial Development Agency is hoping, though, that the future operator of the proposed Yankee Stadium garages will be able to make enough money from shoppers and commuters on non-game days to break even.

This is how the math works:

If all the new parking slots (9,179 total) are filled every game day (81 times a year), the operator will bring in $18.59 million annually from Yankees-related revenue. But the $225 million in bonds, if paid back over 30 years at 6.5 percent, would require $17.04 million a year in payments.

That leaves just $1.55 million a year for salaries, maintenance, utilities and other operational costs—not to mention rent that the operator, the Bronx Parking Development Corporation, is supposed to pay the city.  read more »

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.

Good Jobs New York, a watchdog organization, still thinks that the new Yankee Stadium is a bad idea. When the City Council approved the idea in April 2006, Good Jobs did not think it would pay for itself. Now, after additional city commitments, rising infrastructure costs and revised estimates by the Independent Budget Office, the group issued a new report today showing that taxpayers’ costs for the project had risen by another $217.4 million.

According to the nonprofit’s tally, costs to the city, state, M.T.A. and federal government for the project total $663.5 million—including the cost of constructing new parks to replace the parkland where the new stadium is being erected. That is more than twice the $315.7 million in benefits that Good Jobs calculates.

“Our numbers solidify that taxpayers were misled when they said it was a privately financed project,” said Bettina Damiani, project director for Good Jobs. “New Yorkers are paying for this by having our parks taken away and our tax dollars spent.”

Seth Pinsky, executive vice president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, disputed the report’s estimate, saying that the city calculated that the stadium, and new parking garages, would result in a net gain for the budget of $76 million. He said that the Good Jobs study also failed to consider the indirect impacts, such as the positive press the new ball park would generate nationally when it opened.

“This stadium project is among the most expensive stadiums in the country,” Mr. Pinsky said in an e-mail. “It’s not an easy lift even for a wealthy team like the New York Yankees.”  read more »

One of the loose threads in the construction of the new Yankee Stadium was who was going to build new parking garages that the team wanted built. The Yankees said at first that the private sector would step up to the, um, plate, but skeptics didn't see many companies out there clamoring for the privilege. This month, to build the garages, the city is calling upon a nonprofit organization with ties to Michael Bailkin, a lawyer who pioneered the city's earliest economic development incentives during the Koch era. The Industrial Development Agency, an arm of city government, is getting ready to award $186 million in tax-free bonds to Community Initiatives Development Corporation, a Hudson, N.Y., organization that is headed by William S. Loewenstein, Mr. Bailkin's former partner at Stadtmauer Bailkin Biggins LLP (which has since turned into Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co.).

As a nonprofit, CIDC qualifies for tax-exempt loans that it has used to develop senior centers, affordable housing complexes, senior centers and municipal garages in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, according to its tax filings. It is unclear whether the firm plans to keep the Yankee garages' revenues or turn part of them over to the city. (Mr. Loewenstein has not returned a telephone message.)

Originally, when the Yankees announced the stadium deal in June 2005, the team said that garage revenues would go to the state in return for contributing $70 million to the $281 million project. In addition, the city will pitch in $21 million--although that is supposed to be used to build a park on top of the garages, according to documents released by the I.D.A.

The tax-exempt bonds will cost the city $2 million in lost taxes, on top of another $400 million-plus in other sorts of subsidies for the project, according to watchdog group Good Jobs New York. The I.D.A., which will hold a public hearing on the garages Thursday, asserts the benefits in terms of added sales and other taxes will more than make up for that.

Meanwhile, the proposed Metro-North station at the new Yankee Stadium is still looking for a sponsor.

- Matthew Schuerman UPDATE: This post was updated with additional information about the nonprofit developer of the garages.

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• Retail in the shadow of Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.
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Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

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It always seemed like a funny trick to get support for the new Yankee Stadium: build a new Metro North station nearby, not with the Yankees' money, mind you, but with the public's. Unfortunately, the $45 million that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had set aside for the project, which was supposed to start this spring, is not nearly enough.

Try $80 million instead.

All of which, Real Estate Weekly reports in its March 21 issue (available in print only), led Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión to look for another way to pay for it. Wait, how about asking the Yankees to pitch in? No, Mr. Carrión has another idea.

He wants to let a developer build "an extensive mixed-use development" on top of the station in return for paying for the station's construction.

Bidder up!

- Matthew Schuerman

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion--considered by many to be a 2009 mayoral contender--walked out of an interview on Wednesday with News12 when asked hard questions about whether the Parks Department was living up to its promises for the Yankee Stadium project, according to people who have seen the segment.

Here's a piece from the report, which concerned the fake running track (known as a sidewalk) we reported on in September. (The Carrion interview is not online, however.) We have a call and an e-mail in to the Beep.

- Matthew Schuerman

Purnima Kapur, who managed the complex (and controversial) rezonings for Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Terminal Market as director of the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning, starts work Monday in her new post, director of the Brooklyn office. She replaces Regina Myer, who has gone on to the city's Hudson Yards Development Corporation. -Matthew Schuerman

The 15-foot-wide cinder running track that was supposed to be set up in the Bronx after the Yankees demolished Macombs Dam Park hasn't been built yet, if it ever will be, but the Parks Department lets you in on a secret: it is possible to run on the sidewalk. Lukas Herbert, a Yankee Stadium opponent and community board member, sent us the above picture and notes:

Arrows have been placed to make sure you do not get lost along with "mile markers" telling you how far you have run (in 0.1 mile increments). In addition, the parks department has also placed motivational signs near each marker telling you to "keep it up" and directing you to a website where you can get more information about fitness.

With all of that encouragement, who needs a running track anyway?  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

Pataki: Is He for Real?  read more »

The borough that swallowed its major league pride when the Dodgers left 50 years ago will have to do so again: several tons of dirt from the excavation of the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx will be carted (or shipped, perhaps) down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park as soon as this summer.

The arrangement was mentioned--to Brooklyn Beep Marty Markowitz's mock horror--this morning at a press conference announcing that the Port Authority had given up three-and-a-half piers along the East River which will be used for the $150 mile city and state park. And it explains why the park development corporation at first said the park would be open this summer for "interim uses" and now says people won't be able to do much more than take a walking tour. Wendy Leventer, the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Development Corporation, said the imported dirt would cut millions of dollars off of construction costs but that her agency had not expected it to come as quickly as it will--though she says she is not certain exactly when that is. The dirt will go on the upland portion of the park to create a berm to deaden the sound of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

-Matthew Schuerman

Let's see, if the city sold every seat at Yankee Stadium at the rate they were in 2004, when 100 three-seat sections fetched $1,500 each, then New York City could earn back $28.8 million of the $164 million it will spend on the new ballpark. (On the other hand, last year's auction for the old Busch Stadium's detritus netted just $900,000 total.) -Matthew Schuerman

The Mayor has now begun calling community benefits agreements "ransom." How much was that ransom, in the case of the Yankee Stadium deal? $54.75 million.  read more »

Joyce Purnick notes today (subscription required) how the last-minute endorsement by Mayor and Governor for a Yankee Metro-North station (paid for by M.T.A. taxpayers and riders) was all that was needed to convince some pols to vote yes for Yankee Stadium. But wasn't that a card Bloomberg and Pataki had been keeping up their sleeve all along until the opportune moment?

At times, that card did get shown, but no one remembers.

Last June in the Daily News, just before the official unveiling, T.J. Quinn, citing unnamed sources, reported:

The state and city will spend up to $300 million to replace and enhance park land that will be lost to the new site, build new parking structures, extend the subway platform, build a Metro-North station and build up the Bronx waterfront. (Archive fee.)

Two weeks later, the News reported that the new station, along with the subway improvements, would cost $90 million. (Another archive fee.) Now, Yankee fan Adolfo Carrion is saying the Metro-North station would cost but $30-40 million. Ah, thank goodness for deflation.

-Matthew Schuerman UPDATE: The Metro-North station was actually part of the Borough President's plan for the area. The final environmental impact statement for the stadium indicates the Mayor supported the idea back in February when it came out :

[A]lthough a new Metro-North station is not part of the proposed project, the City and the Yankees support the construction of the proposed Metro-North Yankee Stadium station, and the proposed project has been developed so as not to preclude the future construction of a new station. (p. 541)

At least there was some pay-off for those who sat through an hour’s worth of people finding 44 ways to say yes.

During today's floor "debate" on land-use changes for Yankee Stadium, Council Member Lew Fidler blurted out: "As a lifelong Democrat, I always found it hard to accept that the Yankees are in fact owned by a Watergate felon." When fellow councilors groaned, he added, "Facts are facts."  read more »

Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg and every other elected official who could squeeze inside a two-page press release just came out in support of a Metro-North station at the proposed new Yankee Stadium site. Tough call. We wonder what took these guys so long to, um, get on board.

Apparently a deadline. Tomorrow the City Council members will vote on the stadium, though, according to the Daily News, they don't need any more reason to say yes.

The M.T.A. board will still have to approve it, though with the Governor and Mayor behind it they probably will. No word on how much it will cost--$5 million for design alone--but it is quite clear who will be paying: not the Yankees, but the transit agency, and the riders and taxpayers who support it.

--Matthew Schuerman

Council Member Tony Avella told the Metro newspaper that he would vote against the Yankee Stadium plan Wednesday because the community benefits agreement amounted to a shakedown. Even one vote against that stadium would represent a major backlash against these agreements. No link to Metro but Neil deMause has a similar entry on his blog. -Matthew Schuerman

I'll be linking Room Eight as I do any other site that covers city politics, but here's a quick round-up of the first few days. EnWhySeaWonk offers an illustrated report card on the candidates for Attorney General's aptitude at filling out required forms.

Looking at Brooklyn's congressional races, Gatemouth curses Charles Barron, while Rock Hackshaw reports that Nick Perry is still in the race in Brooklyn's 11th.

Yoda doesn't think the arguments for the Jets stadium are holding up too well in retrospect, and Lead Dog sniffs around the New Yankee Stadium deal. Jerry Skurnik suggests the Post forgot its cop-funeral crusade pretty fast. Robert Hornak wishes Republicans would start talking about school choice. And Backroomie does some City Council math.

Much as expected, the Empire State Development Corporation gave its final approval for the state’s $74.7 million contribution to Yankee Stadium this morning, on top of the $130 million the city is chipping in. But the team is not, um, home free yet. The City Council, which will hold a committee meeting on the issue March 28, still has to approve the land-use changes required by the plan, and the state’s Public Authorities Control Board needs to second the E.S.D.C. financing. (The Mets also got $74.7 million today but their plan is a lot less controversial.) -Matthew Schuerman

Some Bronx activists, Councilwoman Helen Foster included, are outraged—OUTRAGED—over the draft community benefits agreement for the new Yankee Stadium, details of which got into The New York Times today. Question is, will anything happen as a result or will it become as much a non-issue as was the C.B.A. for Related’s shopping mall at Bronx Terminal Market? (Via Neighborhood Retail Alliance) -Matthew Schuerman

The nice thing--the only nice thing?--about all these sports stadiums and arenas going up these days, or trying their darnedest, is that headline writers get to use sports analogies. Hence, Good Jobs New York called its report on Yankee Stadium "Loot, Loot, Loot for the Home Team," allowing The Post to declare that the deal struck out, The Sun gave it a Bronx cheer, while The Daily News veered into Middle English (or sports announcer-ese?) with "Thee Yankees Win." The down and dirty is that taxpayers could lose as much as $480 million in park relocation costs and lost tax revenue. Another interesting note: the state legislature quietly seized Bronx parkland last June to make this arrangement possible. Get to the report here. -Matthew Schuerman

To the shock and surprise of everyone following grand stadium projects, the estimated cost of a new Yankee Stadium that the city and the team have been putting out...may be a little low.

Good Jobs New York adds in foregone rent and other factors, and pegs the cost at $400 million to the city, almost three times the public price tag.

"Now all we need is a couple of commuters," laughed Chuck Schumer, striding into a crowd of Ferrer supporters at the Yankee Stadium subway stop around 6 p.m. He was greeted by Freddy and Aramina; campaign barker Kenny Agosto was busy touting Aramina on his bullhorn as "The First Lady of Our Hearts."

From the crowd came the sound of a cowbell, and occasional shouts of "Dignidad Contra Dinero!" When television cameras arrived, the slogans got louder.

"Fernando tranquilo: El pueblo esta contigo!" chanted Chuck, offering a little dance for the cameras.

On the edge of the crowd, a tall, blond Bloomberg tracker had a laugh with The Politicker over one of his colleagues, a brown-haired fellow, also tall, who appeared on our Web site after he greeted Howard Dean during a campaign stop last month.

"I'd love to go say hi to Chuck Schumer," the blond tracker said ruefully. "But I'm not dumb. I like to read The Politicker, not be on it."

Meanwhile, Kenny had come up with a new slogan for the Senator, and was introducing him over the bullhorn as "the defender in the judiciary committee, fighting off those conservative judges!"  read more »

Chuck took his own turn at the bullhorn: "We want to hear it for a great person, Kenny Agosto...who never stops!"

At least for the moment, Kenny was speechless.

If they watched the overnight vigil in Saint Peter's Square as the Pope lay dying, the good doctors  read more »

There's a reason why the real world ought to be more like the world of sports, and here it is: Sport  read more »

One of the city's big men, to use the archaic term of deference once applied to the excruciatingly r  read more »

A foul ball streaked into the stands, but there was nobody there to chase it down, to bring it home  read more »