Stadium Battle Builds Up

The clash over the proposed stadium and convention center on Manhattan's far West Side has been heating up, as key players vie for an edge in financial negotiations and opponents aim to land a knockout blow.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made the proposed New York Sports and Convention Center the centerpiece of the city's campaign for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The proposal calls for a 75,000-seat stadium for the New York Jets, convertible into a 180,000-sq.-ft. convention center, that would be built above Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards. A Jets spokeswoman said that market pressures have recently pushed the estimated cost to $1.7 billion, with the team owner covering up to $1.1 billion of those costs, she said. The city and state have committed $300 million each toward improvements for the project, including a platform over the rail yards.

The MTA and the Jets have been trying for a year to hammer out a deal for air rights over the roughly 13-acre site bounded by 11th and 12th Avenues and 30th and 33rd streets. They were unable to bridge the gap earlier this year between the MTA's nearly $300 million asking price and the Jets' $100 million offer.

But in February, the stadium proposal encountered a surprise challenge from Madison Square Garden, whose majority owner, Cablevision Systems, has helped fund the opposition campaign because it views the planned Jets facility as a threat to its arena. The Garden offered $600 million to build a housing-centered, mixed-use development on the site, including up to $250 million for the cost of building a platform. Stadium supporters quickly dismissed the offer as an attempt to prevent the mayor's plan from gaining traction. But it helped spur the MTA's subsequent decision to solicit proposals on the site from all interested bidders. It had asked for their offers by late March.

That pleased observers such as Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County who chairs the state Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, and who wants to ensure that the MTA gets fair value at a time when funding is uncertain for the agency's proposed $27 billion capital plan. "Every penny that MTA can get for capital spending, it needs to get," Brodsky said.

Jersey City Dispute Settled

With a contentious eviction dispute behind it, the developer of mixed-use projects on neighboring sites in Jersey City hopes to resolve differences with city officials over the scope of a $100 million development at 110 and 111 First St., near a waterfront that has undergone massive redevelopment in the last decade.

The developer, New Gold Properties, had planned to redevelop 111 First, a 400,000-sq.-ft. former tobacco factory that has served as an artist's enclave for more than a decade. New Gold had rented to the artists on an original plan to create mid-rise residential housing with live-in artist studios. But it later found structural problems in the complex, which consists of eight timber and masonry buildings of four to six stories erected in stages starting in 1870.

New Gold's structural engineer, Porcello Engineering of Pine Brook, N.J., determined that extensive cracks, sagging walls, sinking foundations, and other issues posed a danger of collapse. The developer decided to seek a permit for demolition, but the artists bitterly opposed those plans in a dispute that played out prominently in the local media.

New Gold received a partial demolition permit in December from the city, while also seeking a petition to demolish the entire structure. Only weeks later, the developer and tenants reached an agreement in Jersey City Superior Court that required the occupants to vacate by March 1 in exchange for New Gold waiving $600,000 in back rent.

But issues remain. Though the developer had already demolished 110 First, using Backhoe Services of Bayonne, N.J., to take down the 270,000-sq.-ft. structure, New Gold has decided to challenge the city's decision to apply historic district zoning for the properties, which would limit 111 First to five stories and 110 First to seven stories.

Despite New Gold's plans to build a 20-story, 300-unit residential complex at 110 First, the zoning change "only allows us to build exactly what we took down - just a big giant box," said Michelle Berliner, vice president of BLDG Management Co. of New York, New Gold's parent company. For its eventual design, New Gold has hired DeWitt Tishman Architects of New York, and it is "also looking to engage an architect-planner," Berliner added. "The design is really up in the air until we get feedback from the city."