Stadium Proposal Moves Forward

The football stadium touted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg logged an approval milestone when the Empire State Development Corporation adopted a general project plan for the $1.4 billion New York Sports and Convention Center.

The plan would create a 2.2-million sq. ft. facility in Manhattan's Hudson Yards neighborhood, including a 75,000-seat stadium for the New York Jets football team, an 180,000-sq. ft. exhibition hall, and 18,000 sq. ft. of meeting rooms linked to the neighboring Jacob Javits Convention Center. Meanwhile, the Jets continue negotiations with the Metropolitan Transit Authority seeking air rights to build on the site above a major rail yard.

The development corporation's approval was no surprise, said Charles Gargano, its chairman. "We had been working on this general project plan for quite some time," he said. The 14-page document outlines the major project goals, along with details on construction, projected use, and financing. The steel-and-glass stadium would sit on a steel and concrete platform over the rail yards between W. 30th and W. 33rd streets, and between 11th and 12th avenues.

Project proponents still face opposition from residents, activists, and city officials in the Hell's Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance and from the Dolan family, which owns Cablevision and Madison Square Garden and has funded the New York Association for Better Choices.

On a separate track, the city's Planning Commission adopted a comprehensive plan to redevelop the 59-block Hudson Yards area. The plan, which doesn't address the stadium proposal specifically, calls for 26 million square feet of commercial development, 20 acres of open space, 13,600 residential units, and expansion of the MTA's 7 subway line. The plan moved to the City Council for final review.

Mayor Unveils $66 Million Staten Island Redevelopment

Work is advancing on engineering and landscape design for a major waterfront redevelopment of Homeport on Staten Island in New York City. The city government has set aside $66 million for infrastructure improvements over five years that will support the redevelopment plan in the Stapleton neighborhood, according to a press release. The two- to-three-year construction timetable is slated to begin in 2006.

The plan would redevelop the former naval base into a mixed-use community. The 36-acre site would have 350 residential units in three buildings, 600,000 sq. ft. of retail and other uses, open space, a waterfront esplanade, additional commercial facilities, and parking. Work on pathways in nearby Tappen Park could begin sooner than the rest of the project, using $400,000 the city has allocated for a first phase starting this spring.

Industry Counters Stadium Critics

A new study aims to counter the prevailing wisdom that large sports stadiums are neighborhood-killers. The report prepared by Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, Inc., a management consulting firm, found that stadium projects aiming to anchor neighborhood redevelopment have succeeded in San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.

The Building Trades Employers' Association, the Building and Construction Trades Council, and the New York Building Congress commissioned the report to boost support for the $1.4 billion New York Sports and Convention Center.

The New York proposal will be able to anchor Hudson Yards area redevelopment, said the report's author, John Alschuler, Jr., president of Hamilton Rabinovitz. "People like the energy and excitement of being near an icon," he said.

Alschuler said the plan avoids the pitfalls of big stadium projects disconnected from their neighborhoods, such as facilities that sit in "a sea of parking," lack public transit infrastructure, and have little coordinated development for neighboring parks, hotels, offices, or housing.

The projects chosen for comparison were planned for economic development, such as Pittsburgh's Heinz Field, which has revitalized a waterfront district near downtown, he said. Alschuler found similar examples in Cleveland's Jacobs Field and San Diego's PETCO Park, which aimed for pedestrian-friendly layouts with planned mixed-use redevelopment. San Diego "is literally experiencing a building boom unequivocally triggered by the new stadium," he said.

All of the compared stadiums house Major League Baseball franchises, but the proposed Manhattan stadium is for the New York Jets football team and, with 75,000 seats, larger than most baseball parks. Alschuler dismissed warnings from critics about traffic gridlock, saying the stadium proposal invites ferry, bus, and subway use. He added that the other cities in the study - which he argued are more reliant than New York on the automobile - have not experienced gridlock conditions around their stadiums.