(business) NYC to build a new Stadium on the West Side (from ATSNN)

The battle over the 13 acre parcel of land in the West End area of Manhattan is coming to a close. The MTA board is expected to vote in favor of the proposal:



I think the Stadium is the last thing the City needs at this point. The taxpayers are expected to supply HUNDREDS of millions of dollars to make the project feasible for the prospective owners. It's sheer fiscal insanity. Creating a few hundred jobs can't justify that.

Another thing is, ask yourself, does New York City need another soft target for the terrorists? Until we see real results from the current administration, in confronting this problem, I say no major projects in Manhattan.

[edit on 31-3-2005 by Aelita]

[edit on 31-3-2005 by Aelita]

yeah...

those "say NO to a west side stadium" ads are getting annoying...

i could care less...

finally the Jets get their own home

btw, you need to fix your link.

submission guy...

www.nytimes.com

The "say no" ads had a purpose. If you don't care about it, fine, I personally do care about NYC. Cramming it with a stupid stadium is crazy.

I think that the stadium is a good idea. When i first heard about it, i was like, 'good greif, build a museum or something'. But its going to generate money for the city itself and for the city economy, its going to create a lot of jobs to build it, its bringing the superbowl to the city, and might bring the olympics to the city.

Also, lets be clear. The organized resistance to the stadium is from MSG. They are opposed because it'd be competition for their business. MSG also runs cablevision. They've pumped their anti-stadium ads onto tv, and not permited pro stadium ads. Thats called a conspiracy, via a monopoly. And after spending all that money, they haven't been able to convince the that the stadium is 'bad'. They're still the only ones really against it, and have only been able to get a few low level city politicians to weakly support them.

Also, this is personally ironic for me. I am generally opposed to the absurd amount of money involved in playing games. Yet I am generally for the stadium. A friend of mine, an enourmous jets fan, is utterly opposed to the stadium. Why? Tailgating.

You can tailgate in the parking lot of whereever the hell the jets are now. When they move into the city, there is no lot, and there is no tailgating permited.

NY will make the $750 million it will cost taxpayers from a few years of regular games and concerts alone--add in the big ticket events that attact people from out of town, like the Superbowl, World Cup soccer, the Olympics, National Track & Field events--and it is a no brainer.

Adding to the opposition that nygdan mentioned, don't forget that NYC Council Speaker Gifford Miller has been organizing a lot of the opposition, and he will be running for mayor against Bloomberg next year. He would love to see Bloomberg fail in a big way...

Not it's not a no-brainer. I just happened to cruise around that block a couple of days ago.

There is no freaking space there for this monsterous structure.

just wondering.....
where did they find the money to do it???

can I assume that stashed into that great NY State budget somewhere hidden is the funds??

I live in Central NY, so, how much will our property tax, our sales taxes go up, and just what kind of fees have they come up with this time to pay for this nice stadium that I will never visit, anyways....

please, tell me...just where did the funds come from? Last I heard, the City schools were so bad off, the courts ordered the state to increase their funding some outrageous amount.....I believe it was more than the entire state budget had going to all the schools, if I read that article right, and remember right...
searched for the article online, couldn't find it, probably was too long ago...will try again later.

well, when it comes time for the whining that they don't have the money for our teachers (a nearby school district is cutting something like 40 positions this time around, Rochester schools, apparently, are going without school nurses), or what ever else......I'll just remind them that they had to spend it on more important items, like a stadium in NY City, or whatever other lamebrained items they are funding this time around.

By the way, the Olympics in NY City???
I've never been there, so I don't know...but, well.. by what I hear as far as driving around in the place, it's a nightmare.....ya, yas really need a few more hundred thousand visitors showing up for the Olympics there, and well, how far into debt did Greece put themselves in with the last one?

I live in NYC and am so sick of the "Say NO" ads myself. I hope it goes through just to spite the creators of those horrible ads.

Olympics in NYC is a really bad idea. The place is just crammed. A million people descending on New York City? Jeez.

Bad idea.

somehow the prospect of the 2012 Olympics in New York, doesn't sit well, you're probably going to have every doomsday nut and cult walking the streets that year and to have such a major event in NY is asking for trouble imo.

well...

if those "say no" adds are NOT biased then the police or firemen and our kids need this money more than ANY stadium...

the 2012 olympics in NYC is a great terrorist attack date...

thats all i will say...

how closely is this stadium tied to the Javits Expansion? They did come out about the same time, or did the original plan include both? Also, will this stadium be depedant on the Javits Expansion?

I did find this insightful though:

"The latest evasive maneuver was revealed by Gargano earlier this month, at a press event that was supposed to tout his Empire State Development Corporation's finance plan for its half of the $600 million in public funding promised to the Jets. Instead, Gargano let slip a startling revelation: If the state legislature balks at appropriating funds for the stadium, he suggested, New York's City Council could take on the entire nut—and Governor Pataki would find a way of compensating the city under the table, perhaps by having a state agency like the ESDC or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority pick up a larger share of a joint city-state project.
Needless to say, state legislators were mighty steamed to hear they could be cut out of the appropriations loop. "I think it's going to be very difficult to figure a way to get $300 million in state tax dollars to the city over the objections of the legislature," says Gottfried.
But State Senator Liz Krueger, another vocal critic of the stadium plan, is less certain. "The state of New York's budget operates like a slush fund, because that's how it's been set out by Governor Pataki, and the legislature hasn't stopped it," says Krueger. "When Chairman Gargano seems to imply '$300 million there, $300 million there, I can find that in the petty cash drawer,' it disturbs me immensely, but he may be right." "

The Jets' End Run
Will Bloomberg and Pataki spend billions without legislative approval?
www.villagevoice.com...

If you are interested in learning more about this slush fund and how it is used to by-pass the NY York State Constitution and enable our state legislators to borrow billions without a public vote on them, well, here's a good article about it.

----------------------------------------

Albany's secret funds put taxpayers in dark and in debt
State leaders borrowed more than a billion dollars, played politics with it and stuck future taxpayers with the bill. And they're not done yet.

www.syracuse.com.../news/nyslushfunds/poststandard/story1.html

"The three men who run New York’s government have stuck state taxpayers with $1 billion in debt over the last seven years to pay for a series of secretive slush funds under their tight control.
Gov. George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno pulled it off with a tactic that, while legal, skirts the state constitution’s requirement that new state debt be approved by voters.
The three used their dominance of a loosely regulated arm of state government called public authorities to borrow the money. The governor and legislature committed the workers who pay New York’s income tax to a decade or more of repayment — plus interest. "

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so, do you think that the Jet's stadium is worth assigning the cost of it to your children's future?

Originally posted by Nygdan
I think that the stadium is a good idea. When i first heard about it, i was like, 'good greif, build a museum or something'. But its going to generate money for the city itself and for the city economy, its going to create a lot of jobs to build it, its bringing the superbowl to the city, and might bring the olympics to the city.

Also, lets be clear. The organized resistance to the stadium is from MSG. They are opposed because it'd be competition for their business. MSG also runs cablevision. They've pumped their anti-stadium ads onto tv, and not permited pro stadium ads. Thats called a conspiracy, via a monopoly. And after spending all that money, they haven't been able to convince the that the stadium is 'bad'. They're still the only ones really against it, and have only been able to get a few low level city politicians to weakly support them.

Excellent post.

I say, build the stadium. And I am an upstate New Yorker who commutes to the City. I will help pay for it also, and I'm all for it. Hey, gotta spend money to make money. Think of what a stadium like this could do for the local economy. Besides, they're the New York Jets, not the New Jersey Jets. And I would love to go there and see this new stadium whenever my Bengals come into town...

Originally posted by steggyD
I say, build the stadium. And I am an upstate New Yorker who commutes to the City. I will help pay for it also, and I'm all for it. Hey, gotta spend money to make money. Think of what a stadium like this could do for the local economy. Besides, they're the New York Jets, not the New Jersey Jets. And I would love to go there and see this new stadium whenever my Bengals come into town...

I'm a Long Islander, and I'm not willing to put up a penny of my funds for this non-essential monstrosity. The MTA could have easily generated cash for the City, if they wanted to, by pursuing a different plan tha doesn't involve such gigantic subsidies.

Project of this scale tend to run way over budget. I'll let you guess where the additional hundreds of million will be coming from.

This is just insane. Reducing basic services and wasting so much cash at the same time... Gosh. And the Olympics in Manhattan is a lunatic idea. In Atlanta, there was a bombing in the Olympic park. Now, NYC would be a prized target for any nut out there, and I'm afraid there are many.

NY State has taken on close to a billion dollars of debt in the past 7 years with promises of creating jobs, increasing the tax base...blah, blah, blah.....
using policies that if they are not illegal well they should at least be considered an abuse of power!!(read my previous post above and the link provided concerning their nice slush fund.

I don't know, but well, I think this tactic isn't working that well, any increase in revenue that they might be producing is quickly turning into red ink in interest payments!!!

:bash:

I just love those two little smileys!!!

More on this in todays Times

I think it's pretty well explained

Originally posted by Aelita
The MTA could have easily generated cash for the City, if they wanted to, by pursuing a different plan tha doesn't involve such gigantic subsidies.

Come on, those MTA hacks can't even operate their own business without constantly shutting down services and raising prices. If they were a private company in a competitive market, they'd've been lucky to have been hostily taken over.

This is just insane. Reducing basic services and wasting so much cash at the same time

Short of a study that can reasonably demonstrate that this stadium will not result in more jobs and more money for the city, I can't see any reason to not support it. I haven't seen anything like that yet. Also, I am very disturbed by the fact that cablevision is the major public opposition and just happens to be the only competition in the marketplace for the propsed stadium, and that they refused to air pro-stadium political ads on the stations that they controlled. If there's any conspiracy involved, then a media corporation silencing political opposition in order to maintain a monopoly is certainly it.
Also, I don't see that the funds that the city or state has to put in place would actually be properly used anyway, considering the abysmal state of NYC's edcucational system, which is where everyone is saying the money should go anyway. I think that if there is no stadium, everything is the same as it ever was. Build the stadium, you get the superbowl, the olympics, and, heck, a big giant stadium that thousands of yammering football fans flock to surrounded by bars and restaurants that they'll pay 7 bucks a beer and 15 bucks a burger in.