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October 25, 2009
Yankees Claimed a Park; Children Got Bus Rides
The New York TImes
By Jim Dwyer
Put this one in the "Should Have Seen This Coming From A Mile Away" folder. This article bemoans the promises not kept and the poor deal that the City struck with the Yankees to put the team in their new stadium.
Where were the critical articles from the Times when these deals were being made? If the proposed Atlantic Yards project moves forward, can we then expect the Times to expose the incredible public subsidies and eminent domain abuse for this land grab when it's too late?
Yankee Stadium is a kind of marker of civic values, and the end of the season is a good time to measure how those values have evolved. But it won’t be easy. More than most sports, professional baseball is marinated in the cheap liquor of nostalgia. People get drunk on it and lose their judgment. So this history cannot walk a straight line.
As mayor, one of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s jobs was to serve as landlord for the Yankees. Mr. Giuliani, who made his name as a corruption buster, was able to buy four World Series rings from the Yankees for about $16,000 — which might well be less than a fifth of their retail value. Who knows if he has bells on his toes to go with the rings on his fingers, but Mr. Giuliani promised the team a sweet deal on a new ballpark.
Then Michael R. Bloomberg became mayor and canceled the Giuliani arrangements. “Everybody understands that given the lack of housing, given the lack of school space, given the deficit in the operating budget, it is just not practical this year to go and build stadiums,” Mr. Bloomberg said in 2002. “You have to set priorities, and the priorities this year do not allow for the construction of sporting stadiums.”
That moment passed. The Bloomberg administration proceeded to negotiate a new deal — turning over parkland for 40 years with no rent and no taxes, rebuilding streets and roads and a commuter rail station and letting the team use the city’s tax-free bonding capacity.
Posted by steve at October 25, 2009 8:12 AM