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The Yankees and Mets united in ripping you off, Gotham taxpayer / non-luxury suite occupant!
Website on the present and future stadium swindles:
http://www.fieldofschemes.com/
and Neil deMause's recent Voice article on the twin NY boondoggles:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0611,demause,72529,5.html
The Yankees plan, which would demolish the House That Ruth Built and build a new stadium across 161st Street to the north, leaped out to a quick start last summer. Just eight days after Bloomberg's stadium press conference, and before most Bronx residents had even learned the details of the plan, the state legislature moved to "alienate" Macombs Dam and Mullaly Parks, 21 acres of which would be obliterated to make way for the ballpark. Before this could happen, the city council had to sign off on a Home Rule message endorsing the legislature's land grab. This message, however, arrived in the council "preconsidered"—the city's version of the state legislature's infamous "messages of necessity" that allow lawmakers to dispense with debate.
As a result, there were no public hearings, and according to council minutes obtained by Good Jobs New York, councilmembers never even discussed the issue. Meanwhile, the council's finance division provided members with a "Fiscal Impact Statement" indicating "no impact on [city] expenditures resulting from the enactment of this legislation"—though by the city's own admission, it will be on the hook for more than $135 million in land and infrastructure costs. (Both a Good Jobs study and an analysis by the Voice put total public subsidies, including tax and rent breaks, at more than $400 million—with about half of that coming from the city.)...
The city's draft environmental-impact statement, meanwhile—a 700-plus-page tome that, several Bronx residents have complained, is unreadable to the borough's many Spanish speakers—attracted a flood of citizen comments, which were mostly dismissed with a perfunctory wave of bureaucratese. (Sample text: "The commenter's assertion that the proposed project is 'laden with hidden public subsidies' is outside the scope of [this] analysis. . . . Neither the City nor the State will have any obligation to pay for construction of the new stadium. Thus, there are no hidden public subsidies.") ...
The Mets project, meanwhile, virtually disappeared from the radar after Bloomberg's initial announcement last summer of a new 44,000-seat facility—about 25 percent smaller capacity than Shea Stadium, though roughly the same height—to be built in what's now the center field parking lot. Unlike the Yankees' series of ULURP hearings, the Mets plan has only a single public hearing to its credit so far: an Empire State Development Authority shindig that was held at four on a Monday afternoon, and drew all of six speakers....
The city insists that the Mets plan doesn't need a fresh public review process because it already conducted an impact study back in 2001, when the project was set to sport a retractable roof and a different financing scheme. It's hard to say, though, since the Mets have still not released their designs for a new stadium, and official state documents indicate design schematics as "intentionally deleted."
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 April 2006 17:36 (eighteen years ago) link
The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez, via Field of Schemes:
The furor over the parks issue prompted [state assemblyman Jose] Rivera and Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) to get some last-minute improvements in the proposal. They include a commitment from the city and state to build a new Metro-North train station at the stadium to cut down on automobile traffic on game days; an additional $8 million for improving other neighborhood parks in the South Bronx, and a commitment by the Yankees to donate $800,000 a year for 40 years to local nonprofits.
But the biggest of these add-ons - the train station and parks improvements - are being thrown in by the city and state, not the Yankees!
"It's one branch of government bargaining with another branch to save the Yankees project," said a veteran Council staffer.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/406469p-344083c.html
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 7 April 2006 13:53 (eighteen years ago) link
two years pass...
seven years pass...
The Braves Play Taxpayers Better Than They Play Baseball
Small towns across the South are paying the bills for Atlanta’s farm system
Over the last 15 years, the Braves have extracted nearly half a billion in public funds for four new homes, each bigger and more expensive than the last. The crown jewel, backed by $392 million in public funding, is a $722 million, 41,500-seat stadium for the major league club set to open next year in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta. Before Cobb, the Braves built three minor league parks, working their way up the ladder from Single A to Triple A. In every case, they switched cities, pitting their new host against the old during negotiations. They showered attention on local officials unaccustomed to dealing with a big-league franchise and, in the end, left most of the cost on the public ledger. Says Joel Maxcy, a sports economist at Drexel University: “If there’s one thing the Braves know how to do, it’s how to get money out of taxpayers.”
The Atlanta Braves own most of their minor league farm system, including, along with a Double-A team, the Triple-A team in Gwinnett County, Ga.; the Single-A team in Rome, Ga.; and lower-level teams in Danville, Va., and Lake Buena Vista, Fla. It’s an unusual arrangement....
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-atlanta-braves-stadium/
eleven months pass...
one year passes...