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March 16, 2011
Yankee Stadium parking strikes out
Bronx outfit faces default on bonds as fans park elsewhere and residents fume
Crain's NY Business
by Hilary Potkewitz
As we, and others, notably Streetsblog, have been warning for years, the Yankee Stadium parking situation is a disaster. Now even Crain's is catching on. When you pave parks to put up a parking lot, everybody loses. Even the people running the parking lots.
The first pitch of the baseball season and the return of thousands of fans cannot come fast enough for most businesses around Yankee Stadium. But one company might prefer that April be postponed this year.
Bronx Parking Development Co., which runs the garages for the new stadium, faces an April 1 due date for a $6.8 million interest payment on bonds issued to fund construction of three facilities. The company had to dip into reserves to make a similar payment in October, and—barring a last-minute renegotiation—all signs point to a default this time.
A default could set up a seizure by bondholders and would leave the garages' future in question. The property, which covers some 21 acres, was part of parkland taken over to make way for the current incarnation of Yankee Stadium.
The potential irony has some in the community seething.
“Our community loves its parks, and we could always use more,” said Pastor Wenzell Jackson, chairman of Bronx Community Board 4, which includes the stadium and the surrounding area. “Now there's just empty parking garages that are not benefiting the community.”
This isn't complicated. Use eminent domain the way it was intended — seize these garages and rebuild a park for the people.
But the geniuses who brought you this disaster in the first place want to pour gasoline on the fire.
Community leaders, including Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., are planning for what comes next.
“We've been working diligently to bring a top-flight hotel to the area near Yankee Stadium,” Mr. Díaz said in his State of the Borough Address late last month. “As many of you have heard, the Yankee Stadium parking lots are facing severe financial problems ... and we believe one of the garages could be used for the hotel development.”
Because that area has tremendous tourist demand during the 21 hours a day when baseball isn't being played? Or because hotel developers make nice campaign donations?
It's clear that not all the garages are needed. In August, Bronx Parking admitted that the facilities, which contain 9,000 parking spaces, were never more than 60% full on game days. As a result, it said, revenues were insufficient to service the more than $237 million in tax-exempt bonds issued to fund its project, which involved building three new garages and refurbishing several existing ones.
And how do you entice more people to park? By raising the rates by 50%!
Last year, Bronx Parking officials complained that an estimated 800 cars a game were parking at the nearby Gateway Shopping Center. And for good reason: Spaces at the center cost about $4 an hour, compared with $23 a game for a self-park space in the stadium garages (or $35 for valet service). This year, rates will increase to $35 a game ($45 for valet), according to the company's 2011 operating budget.
NoLandGrab: As our pro-Atlantic Yards friends used to chant about people's homes in the project's footprint: Tear it down! Tear it down!
Posted by eric at March 16, 2011 11:52 AM