I spent one of the last days of my Christmas stay-cation thinking about the history of stadium and arena construction in and around NYC, which leads to this and one additional post to follow. It's mostly from my head with a few things I had to look up or confirm at Wikipedia.
First, I thought about when was the most recent location of every major NYC sports stadium or arena first built upon. If a structure was rebuilt or renovated at the same location that doesn't count. I'm looking to determine when new ground was broken because that's what NYCFC has to do. I'm counting the 2009 Yankee Stadium as basically the same location as the original. Nobody else has the opportunity to do an across-the-street land swap.
1890 Polo Grounds
1913 Ebbets Field
1923 Yankee Stadium
1925 MSG 3
1964 Shea/Citi
1968 MSG 4
1969 Lincoln Center
2012 Barclays
That's it. Four locations that predate the Great Depression of which only 1 still stands. Then a 40-year break before three in the mid-late 1960s, including one non-sports site I threw in. Two of those, Shea and Lincoln Center, were Robert Moses projects and the third led to the country's first Landmark preservation law when MSG 4 was built over the torn down Penn Station structure.
Then another 40-year break before Barclays Arena, which was built on land that waited development for 5 decades. The Dodgers wanted to build there in the 1950s, Moses tried to make them move to Flushing, and instead they went to LA. In the end it took years of planning and litigation, with a Mayor who was absolutely pushing the project, to get Barclays done, and then they still had to downsize it.
Meanwhile the baseball Giants, Dodgers (as just mentioned), football Giants, Jets, and MetroStars/Redbulls all made efforts of various levels to build in the city and failed.*
That's how hard this is.
* To be fair, I'm not sure either Giants team made much of an effort to build in NYC, but it was not for lack of interest. The GiantsB owner Horace Stoneham had little money, but also few options to acquire land even if he was flush. The GiantsF wanted to stop subletting someone else's stadium. I'm not aware they explored many options besides the Meadowlands, but I'm sure they would have wanted to build in the city if they could have acquired sufficient land near transportation.
