Something that Major League Baseball forgot

Proposed New York Jets Stadium, Manhattan West Side, NYC
The proposed West Side Stadium project for the New York Jets did not get approved. While the Jets planned to invest $800 million in the facility--far far more than proposed by Major League Baseball in Washington, DC, New York government entities were expected to provide $1.7 billion dollars in funding, infrastructure investments, and other benefits. Images: Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects.

Mattwdc commented on one of my blog entries about baseball that part of the reason that Major League Baseball is so gung ho on this lease and that they intend to use this deal to "set back the clock" in terms of how cities negotiate with professional sports. This is so that sports teams can once again start bludgeoning local governments, using the DC deal as primary evidence on the value professional sports provides, and how much it is worth to a city. I suppose that MLB is to be commended on their concern for the overall "good" of professional sports leagues vs. the communities where the teams play.

As the Post pointed out on Sunday, in "Beyond Washington, Most Teams Cover Stadium Overruns," most of the recent stadium deals have provisions whereby the team pays for a significant proportion of the facility, including overruns. Clearly that is a situation that the leagues find distasteful.

This is what has so many DC residents on edge. I mean, even I can swallow hard and let public funding go forward, if there would just be some benefits, as well as protections for the city-city residents. I mean if we're going to build the stadium, then on those other 260+ days we (the city) ought to be able to use-market it. (Although I can't imagine the city doing too good a job with those opportunities, can we say "DC Sports and Entertainment Commission?" Maybe we can contract out the job to the Maryland Stadium Authority or Madison Square Garden?)

Anyway, the thing that MLB (and Mayor Williams) forgot is the spectacular failure of Mayor Bloomberg and his Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff to get the boondoggle Jets Stadium through for the West Side of Manhattan. Too many public officials weren't willing to rollover on such a big expensive project that was a stretch economically in so many ways.



See this article from New York Magazine, "Stadium of Dream: Dan Doctoroff’s dreams, that is. With evangelical fervor, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor has been selling a plan to remake Manhattan’s West Side with a stadium for the Jets at its center. But when the cheerleading stops, a question remains. Does the plan make sense?" or this piece from Gotham Gazette "The Jets Stadium: Another Sad West Side Story" which says:

Supporters of the proposal for a football stadium on the Hudson railyards describe it as a way to revive the neighborhood, the city, and the region. In reality, the plan serves only the needs of the New York Jets.

Stadiums have not proved to be sensible public investments. On game days, they clog the streets with traffic -- in this case in an area where streets are already straining under the weight of the Javits Center, Madison Square Garden, and the theaters on Broadway. In other cities, when no events are scheduled at a stadium, by contrast, the surrounding area turns into a ghost town. This pattern discourages other types of developments nearby.

Index Keywords: baseball; stadiums-arenas