Does anyone have any info on the pier 40 rumor? God that would have been gorgeous.
My personal perspective is the following. For better or for worse we should get comfortable with little to no movement on the stadium until roughly 2018, when Deblasio hopefully leaves office. Looking at the track record of the city, no big or splashy projects get off the ground under a mayor with a (D) next to his name. And going off of Deblasio's public statements to move forward with a stadium in NYC right now, he is going to want something that is absolutely unacceptable to an ownership group like CFG. Off the top of my head here are some things that I can see Deblasio demanding that are both in line with his public statements on how he wants the city to run, and that will torpedo any deal we have.
1. Equivalent exchange of space. Deblasio will demand that there is no net loss of public park space however the stadium is built. We all live in NY or at least know enough about property values here to know this immediately kills the deal. At that point why just not buy a couple random blocks and sight the stadium where you want, it accomplishes the same thing.
2. No loss of NYC tax revenue. Deblasio could very simply say you are not going to get any tax breaks for a stadium while the schools/cops/fire department/infrastructure (pick one) of our city are in such shambles. Stadium economics are dodgy anyway no tax breaks kills the deal.
3. Must have local support for a stadium. Ha ha ha. You mean pay bribes to every Tom, Dick, and Gambino who wants theirs before we can contribute to the city.
I like to think of our wait for the next decade as a good thing. If CFG built a stadium right now, it would probably be some 25-40k person mini stadium. We wait 5-10 years and I think Yankees stadium is fully packed every single weekend, as in 50k+ people. What that looks like to me is something Sheik Mansoor looks at and says, what if I built a big stadium, like 80k+ and move the USMNT into it. People like the Sheik want to build a legacy, all you need to do is pitch it correctly.