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Yankee Stadium Bonds Request Defended as Good for the Bronx

The Bloomberg administration is defending its decision to seek additional tax-exempt bonds for the new Yankee Stadium, pointing to the new jobs, increased revenue, and parkland the project will bring to the Bronx.

The new Yankee Stadium, scheduled to be ready for Opening Day 2009, has already received $942 million in tax-exempt financing, but the Yankees are seeking additional tax-exempt bonds that would primarily fund “scope improvements” such as a scoreboard, concession stands, and other stadium amenities.

Since the Tax Reform Act was enacted in 1986, private developers have faced more restrictions when trying to get tax-exempt bonds for stadiums. In 2006, the Yankees, with the support of the Bloomberg administration, avoided such restrictions by having the city and state pay off the bond debt with money received from the Yankees, also known as payment in lieu of taxes.

The IRS is in the process of closing this loophole, but city officials are requesting that they not.

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Difficulty of Work Blamed for Delays Replacing Park Space Lost to Yankee Stadium

A parks department official, called before the City Council to explain why an effort to replace recreation space lost to construction of the new Yankee Stadium has been plagued by delays and cost overruns, said on Tuesday that the department’s inexperience with such complex projects was partly to blame.

The city was required to build new parks in the Bronx after Macombs Dam Park and a portion of John Mullaly Park were chosen as the site of the new stadium. State and federal law dictate that a similar amount of parkland of equal or greater fair market value replace the old parks.

The Parks and Recreation Department originally said that seven of the eight replacement parks would be completed by April 2009, in time for opening day at the new stadium. The eighth, Heritage Field, planned for the site of the current stadium, had been scheduled to open in December 2010, after the stadium is demolished, but that date has been pushed back to 2011.

Earlier this year, the agency said the completion of some of the parks would be delayed for as long as two years and cost $174 million, up from an earlier estimate of $95.5 million. The new figures prompted the City Council’s Parks and Recreation Committee to call for a hearing.

On Tuesday, council members asked Liam Kavanagh, the parks department’s first deputy commissioner, a series of pointed questions, including whether the agency had been dishonest about its original cost estimates.

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Mayor Bloomberg lays out multi-agency economic plan for South Bronx

Mayor Bloomberg came uptown Tuesday to tout his South Bronx Initiative, a multi-agency effort to knit various private projects and city improvements into comprehensive economic development.

But one major player - the borough president - was notably absent.

“The South Bronx - long known nationally as the area Howard Cosell was talking about when he said, ‘The Bronx is burning’ and once known locally as an area of underinvestment and decay - is undergoing an extraordinary transformation,” said Bloomberg.

In recent years, nearly $3 billion in public and private investment has poured into the borough, Bloomberg said, including the $300 million Gateway Center Mall, almost $300 million for local schools, more than $900 million for transportation improvements, as well as the new Yankee stadium.

While the mayor credited Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión and his office for major input into the initiative, Carrión was a no-show at the event on the steps of the Bronx County Building.

Sources in the borough president’s office said Carrion was annoyed at “the last-minute notice - not the first time - from City Hall for the event.”

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Green Thievery in the South Bronx

Many promises were made two years ago when the New York Yankees grabbed prime parkland in the South Bronx to build a new stadium. One of them, made by the city, was that residents would have better parks, soccer fields, tracks and ball courts to replace what was taken away. That has not yet happened — and it must.

The Yankees took more than 20 acres of contiguous parkland — from Macombs Dam and John Mullaly Parks — to build a new stadium adjacent to the original one. Hundreds of mature trees were felled, and even though thousands of new ones have been planted, the area feels like the construction zone it is. State and federal law requires creation of equal or similar amounts of parkland when acres are given up for nonpublic purpose. But the city, which is paying for the new green spaces, is moving too slowly.

Residents have every right to be annoyed over the swap. Replacement facilities would be spread out over smaller plots of land, even over a parking garage. And instead of the natural turf that was taken away, the surface of choice is artificial and less appealing.

Tennis courts that had been in the center of Macombs Dam Park, across the street from residential buildings, will increase in number, but along the waterfront. Attractive as that may sound, it is too far and requires crossing too many busy roadways to be practical for those who live in the area.

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Hearings Planned To Tackle Yankees Financing Plea

An assemblyman, a frequent critic of New York’s public authorities, said yesterday that he plans hearings on the Yankees’ request for additional public financing to complete the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

Assemb. Richard Brodsky (D-Hartsdale) said that hearings could be held within “a couple of weeks.”

Brodsky is chairman of the Standing Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, which oversees the state’s public authorities. Last year, he co-sponsored legislation that would require the state’s authorities to submit contracts for review to the comptroller, limit borrowing and seek legislative approval before creating subsidiaries.

“What’s at stake here is a much bigger issue than whether you like or dislike the Yankee Stadium deal,” Brodsky said. “Stadiums [are] soaking a lot of the tax-exempt financing, and we can’t fund the capital plan of the MTA and we’re short capital money on schools and hospitals.”

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