Stadium Discussion
- Thread starter Gene
- Start date
Is this the longest we've ever gone without a new post in here? Anyway, one reporter live tweeted the hearing just now, and it sounds a lot like they'll uphold the appeals court ruling (and kill the mall):
Damn. We were only 2 days short of the 2 weeks needed to officially trigger the Stadium Announcement.
Noooooooo! We almost made it two weeks!
Ugh, fine, I'll go dust off my stadium-size-comparison tools again. Thanks for nuthin'!
It means that the land that is currently a parking lot around Citi Field can only be used for stadium purposes such as a parking lot or another stadium and they can't build anything else on it (like housing or a mall)
So our likelihood of getting a stadium is no more or less than it was this morning
I have significant doubts about the legality of the "another stadium" part as well.
Yeah, the public trust doctrine issue seems to be two-fold - there's the specific city Ad Code provision, which the mall doesn't really fit but our stadium could, and then there's the more general principle about the State Legislature having to sign off on any deal (which would definitely complicate both proposals). So ultimately if the mall gets killed it opens up a new option for us, but that has just as many legal and political hurdles as the others. (But hey - always nice to have more options, right?)
To clarify, I think there's more chance that the site could open up as an option because of the arguments today. HOWEVER, mgarbowski is right to point out that it's quite possible that there will still need to be a more explicit authorization from the state to build another stadium on that site. So it'll be up to CFG to see if they have the stomach to try and get zoning changes through City Hall and a park use authorization from Albany at the same time. (If they do, lets just hope it goes better than the West Side Stadium debacle.)
The west side stadium thing was totally different though. One, that stadium would have be at least three times the size of ours, and two, there's absolutely no infrastructure for a stadium at that location (highways, parking, etc., and at the time there was no subway there either). I think it'd be many times easier to get a stadium out at Willets point where the land is in one sense "empty." I was always in favor of building a stadium for the Jets/Olympics next to Javits because it'd be cool but it wasn't really every all that realistic I think.
The west side stadium debacle was always limited by one thing, the plot was on 30th street. Every real estate developer and their mother wanted a shot at building there, a public stadium allows no one to make their money except the construction guys, who would make more anyway serially building a bunch of skyscrapers.
Everyone that was influential in the NYC building industry wanted a shot at redeveloping the yards because midtown Manhattan money is a sure thing.
Build it somewhere, ship it over to New York, dock it at a pier. Etihad Island!
I bring up the West Side Stadium because another reason it was killed was MSG's opposition to a potential competitor. (As we found out later, MSG's lobbyist was having an affair with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver at the time, and he was basically the main guy who killed it.) They also made some noise against the original MLS to Queens proposal in 2013. So that's the real lesson that CFG need to take from the West Side Stadium.
"I'll take things I just didn't really want to know for $400, Alex."
