You may have been playing urban planner. But you certainly weren't channelling Robert Moses, who disastrously disdained transit. For example, he single-handedly scuttled plans to put a rail line down the centre of the L.I.E.
Also, Moses cared not a bit about sports stadia. When the Dodgers wanted to build, entirely at their own expense, a new ballpark at the intersection of Atlantic and Fourth Avenues (the eventual site of the Nets' arena), all that the team needed Moses to do was to help aggregate the multiple plots into one. But Moses, who held several City and State posts and was essentially accountable to no one, refused to do a thing in this regard.
Having been soundly rebuffed by the only authority in the City which could help him, the Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley reluctantly looked elsewhere. And he found that municipal officials in Los Angeles, in contrast to New York, were very interested to talk with him.
By the time anyone else in New York City government got wind of the Dodgers' desire to build in Brooklyn, the team had already entered into agreements with Los Angeles city officials about acquiring land in Chavez Ravine for the team to build its (entirely privately financed) stadium. All the City could do at that point was to offer a site in Flushing Meadow Park (the later location of Shea Stadium), which was understandably unimpressive to the Dodgers.
Popular mythology holds that O'Malley abandoned Brooklyn. In fact, O'Malley was driven out of Brooklyn by Moses. In the grand scheme of things, the loss of the Dodgers is a small part of Moses's toxic legacy. The biggest errors of this megalomaniacal madman include the destruction of neighbourhoods by the placement of highways, and the overall promotion of driving in a transit-rich city.
So, if you're imagining creating a sports stadium situated in a spot that is well-served by public transportation, then Moses's name is the last one which you'd want to invoke.
(P.S. - Long Island City is not "close to the city". It's in the city. The archaic use of the term "the city" to refer only to Manhattan really rankles this proud New Yorker from Queens.)
