new yankee stadium

[smazza]

When George Steinbrenner first started beating the drums for a new ballpark, the grand baseball palace he imagined somewhere on the West Side of Manhattan, one filled with luxury suites, he tried to scare people away from the ballpark he already had. He even issued press releases about crime around the ballpark he already had, in the South Bronx. This was 10 years ago, and it was as if he was trying to scare people away from his own product, and from Yankee Stadium, something that seems as improbable now as Jose Contreras winning a big game.

Steinbrenner was going to get a new stadium on the West Side, or else. Or else what? Or else he was going to move to New Jersey. That was the inference, even though Steinbrenner never said that, back in the day. A beam fell one time at the Stadium and everybody got completely hysterical, as though the whole place were going to come crashing down the next time somebody hit a ball off the wall, and we had to break ground on a new Yankee Stadium by the following Tuesday.

The loud idea, in the papers, on the radio, everywhere in town, was that the politicians, especially then-mayor Giuliani, out at the Stadium all the time in Yankee dress-up clothes, better come up with the public money to give Steinbrenner wanted he wanted.

Or else.

The Yankees weren't going anywhere, of course. They never had an offer from Jersey, Steinbrenner would never have moved them, but he still thought he could panhandle for a new Yankee Stadium in broad daylight, and get you to pay for it.

Only now comes the news that Steinbrenner plans to finance the construction of a new Stadium across the street from the old one on his own, at an estimated cost of $700 million. This time, the "or else" goes something like this:

He pays for it himself or else he doesn't ever get a new stadium.

The wind has changed since the start of the game, the way you see it change in the pennants flying at the top of Yankee Stadium some nights. Sometimes the world changes and everybody wins because a handful of people fight the idea that the public is supposed to fund stadiums for rich developers and even richer sports owners.

The Yankees will want infrastructure money and improvements if they can pull this off (new Metro North stop on the premises, parking lots, roads, maybe a hotel and shopping mall of some kind). That means tax dollars, no matter how that gets dressed up. But you can certainly make the case that these sorts of infrastructure improvements in this particular area of the South Bronx are needed a lot more than the Jets need them on the West Side, or Bruce Ratner needs them in Brooklyn, as long as the Yankees insure that they can preserve the public park they're replacing at Macombs Dam Park.

And, oh by the way, hasn't Ratner, who's doing such a splendid job overseeing the construction on his Nets, already tried to rebuild Brooklyn?

Steinbrenner and the Yankees aren't being noble here, for a ton of reasons, including this one: They can deduct, over time, some of the cost of building their own stadium from the money they have to pay out in revenue sharing to other teams, a concept that makes Steinbrenner want to chew his big captain's desk into sawdust.

It is also hard to believe that at the end of the day, Steinbrenner will put himself on the line for all of the construction costs. For now, though, people with knowledge about the plan say Steinbrenner plans to do what Peter Magowan, the Giants owner, did in San Francisco, what you should have to do when you want a new ballpark for your team:

Go to the bank and take out a loan.

Through the huckstering of Daniel Doctoroff - the Prof. Harold Hill of the proposed 2012 Summer Games in New York and West Side development, a man never elected to anything in New York - the Jets have somehow tied their stadium proposal into an Olympics we're not getting, and expansion of the Jacobs Javits Center, something totally irrelevant to a stadium the Jets will use 10 times a year.

The Jets will soon whine that they don't want more than Steinbrenner is going to want from the city and state. But for the money they say they'll put up towards their stadium, they want to keep naming rights, concessions, other revenue - so the idea that Woody Johnson is coming up with $800 million out of his own pocket has been suspect from the start.

The Jets also want their bonds to be tax free, which is kind of a beautiful thing for the Jets. Oh sure. At the heart of the Jets/Doctoroff plan is something that sounds like the kind of sweetheart deal Doctoroff used to come up with when he was moving money around for Texas oil people:

We'll pay off our debt with taxes you, the public, will generate by going to the stadium you're going to help pay for!

It has taken a while for the public, at least the New York public, to figure out the new-stadium hustle that has been booming business for developers and owners for 20 years at least in this country. But now it has.

Steinbrenner's plan isn't perfect, or free, but is close enough. And will make people take a much harder look at the way Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg want to roll over for Woody Johnson and Bruce Ratner. The public has figured out that only owners and developers make scores off these stadiums.

When will the two biggest elected officials in the state do the same?