« On Brian Lehrer Live, video from Friday's state Senate oversight hearing | Main | Finally, someone challenges Marty (oops, he’s a Republican) »
June 4, 2009
New Nets arena could cost city money
Arena Digest
With a name like Arena Digest, they could still be objective, right?
Now, with the price of the arena rising to $950 million, this advantage could be gone, according to a preliminary opinion from the city's Independent Budget Office.
Could be, we say, becuse IBO officials actually didn't perform any sort of financial analysis. They were going with their gut feelings about the project and looking only at the arena, not the total Atlantic Yards project.
So this "news" may not be as significant as the New York tabloids would have us believe -- or, rather, we'll be waiting for the real analysis with real numbers.
NoLandGrab: Actually, the IBO did perform a financial analysis, and they're the only official entity that has done so with any degree of credibility (we assume that Arena Digest would prefer the NYC EDC method of cost-benefit analysis, which assigns a $0 value to costs and then subtracts it from wildly inflated "benefits").
Keep in mind that IBO looked only at the arena because all of the other elements of the Atlantic Yards project are up in the air: size of project, amount of office space, mix of housing, public contribution, timing, etc., etc. Of course, come to think of it, the cost of the arena and the identity of its architect are up in the air, too.
Posted by eric at June 4, 2009 10:17 AM