Ok...I'm about to be the party-pooper...but freaking $1.4 billion for a freaking stadium is so obnoxious I want to throw up. Source: NYC, state, Jets close to West Side stadium deal By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer March 23, 2004 NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Jets are close to a deal for a $1.4 billion stadium on Manhattan's West Side. A source close to the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the deal, which faces opposition from many neighborhood residents, could be announced within a week. The proposal also would expand the nearby Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The Jets would spend $800 million on the stadium. The city and state would spend $600 million on a deck over the existing rail yards and a roof that would allow the stadium to be used as convention space. The plan would be partly financed by an increase in the city's hotel tax. Portions of the plan would need the approval of the state Legislature. The stadium proposal faces stiff opposition from neighborhood activists and elected officials representing the West Side, which consists mainly of warehouses, auto body shops and old rail yards. They charge that the $600 million subsidy would be a sweetheart deal for the Jets. The Jets currently play at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. They share the stadium with the New York Giants. The Jets' lease is up in 2008.
This is a truly awful idea. I used jog by the place where they want to put it; it's not that big a space, the traffic and logistical nightmares will basically make the West side of Manhattan uninhabitable whever there is a game, concert, event, maybe for 25% of the year. Considering that the city of New York has dilapidated schools, roads, and infrastructure (and the new WTC) to pay for, this deal is a total waste. It's not like the jets that are going to up and move to Tulsa if they don't pay for their own damned stadium in White Plains or soemthing.
In Manhattan? Seems like it would be too big and a logistical nightmare... whoops, what Sam and Max said. Would it be based on something like Reliant? Put it in Brooklyn!
I don't know the NY area too well, but how much of that $1.4 billion is land costs? From what little I know of the Manhattan area, land ain't cheap there...
Manhattan is already tough to get around as is. Throw in a stadium and it would get real ugly. In the end, New Jersey loses again. They can't keep their pro teams. HS kids leave the state to play football elsewhere. No fan support. NJ will just have to resign themselves as NY and Philly suburbs.
The Javits Center area is pretty tame. I drive in and out of that area quite often, and I usually do so without any issues. Also, the public transportation around NYC is good. I actually think it is a nightmare to drive to New Jersey to the Meadowlands to attend anything, whether it is a Nets or Jets game. Now at least I can take the subway to the game.
Not that much, I think the city or state owns it already and uses it as a place for storing rusty old rail cars
1. In the grand plan there is a mass transit station planned for the development where a large percentage of the fans can be funneled out to the existing train/subway system. 2. The total project costs is 1.4 billion, that include nearly doubling the Javitz Convention Center (which still leaves it smaller than Chicago and Houston) and building the transit center that would serve to redevelop the Westside area (raising the property values and property taxes). Considering the land costs, unionized labor (mafia?) and logistics, I doubt $800 million would get you a staduim as good as Reliant in Manhatten. As a former land planner I was inetersted and checked out the website a few weeks ago . It is hugely ambitious and will take all the political muscle the developers can muster. Money will be made!
The city is spending $600 million. (financed by a Hotel tax -- because Hotels in NYC are just too big a bargain today?) Isn't that about what Houston spent for Reliant?
No. The total cost was $449 million (roughly $85 million above the original projected cost). I believe the public commitment ended up being $362 million.
Thanks Paige. The cost of these stadiums, and the public's willingness to pay for them, either directly or by imposing taxes, is something that always baffles me.
It is amazing how the costs for each stadium seems to balloon far above the last. In Arlington, we got the Ballpark for under $200 million. Camden Yards cost $110 million. Anyone looking for a stadium today, though, would never consider spending so little for a new stadium.
Around here, it hasn't been out of the hands of the public, though. Reliant Stadium, Toyota Center, Minute Maid Park, Alamodome, Ballpark in Arlington, SBC Center and American Airlines Center all required votes of the public before being approved. And the new Cowboys stadium is requiring a public vote.
Total cost. Camden Yards is something of a rare duck, though, since the big warehouse was already built, and that saved some costs. But the same ballpark would likely cost considerably more now. As for the Ballpark in Arlington, I don't think that includes the cost of the additional land that was purchased (and sparked a lawsuit) for the "development" around the Ballpark (development being a misnomer since the development still has yet to start, even ten years since the opening of the Ballpark).
That's what I mean, around here it is not. The mayor and the shell of a governor (another issue, I don't understand why the governor, usually through the Port Authority, is always sticking his nose into what is city business, but I digress) seem to have just made the deicision that this is what is going to happen, so that's it, unless neighborhood groups/zoning boards/etc get involved.
Getting around the voters seems to be a more and more common practice in these stadium deals, which seems to me to be wrong. As large as these expenditures are, it seems like a vote of the public should be required. I guess they don't do them, though, because they know they'll lose the vote.
In Houston we have the right idea, we don't tax our citizens for our playpens, we tax our out-of town guests through Hotel and car rental taxes. They don't get to vote. One reason Reliant was so 'affordable' is because most of the infrastructure already existed. They used the roads, water and sewer lines that already existed for the astrodome/astroworld complex. They just plopped the new staduim right next to the old stadium. Not to mention Texas' lack of unioinization, access to cheap immigrant labor, sweetheart bids by our 'connected' engineering community that wanted their access to luxury boxes for football back It's a hard number to figure but the costs of stadiums are mitigated to some extent by the income they spur. Like constrution wages, part-time wages for concessionaires, increased property values for adjacent owners; and all of those yield increased tax revenue to the governmental entities. Minute Made and the Toyota Center are visibly changing the nature of the East side of downtown Houston from dilapidated to revitalized. If I could afford it, I would love to buy one of those new downtown lofts and get season tickets for both venues.
