Streetsblog New York City

In case you’re just tuning in, all that taxpayer-subsidized parking built for the new Yankee Stadium has failed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

In today’s Daily News, Juan Gonzalez reports that Bronx Parking Development Company LLC is expected to default this year on the $200+ million in triple-tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York City Industrial Development Agency, the financing arm of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Since the threat of default has loomed for some time now, let’s look at the more recent developments cited by Gonzalez.

The promise of jobs to be created by the garages was never that grand to begin with — 12 full-time and 70 part-time positions, with an average wage of $11 an hour. But Bronx Parking LLC is so desperate for cash, writes Gonzalez, that “the company plans to slash the salaries of a handful of full-time garage employees and to reduce the number of game-day parking attendants from 76 to 57.”

“The people who continue to pay the price for this thing are the kids who lost their park space, and now the handful of people who got jobs and are going to lose them,” says Bettina Damiani, project director of Good Jobs New York, an NGO that has tracked the stadium project from its inception.

On top of that, a proposal to lure a hotel to complement or replace the garages has apparently cratered after four developers who expressed interest in the deal wanted “major city subsidies.” Gonzalez reports that Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., who inherited the stadium parking disaster from his predecessor Adolfo Carrion, “has been pressing City Hall to come up with an emergency plan to restructure the bonds, tear down some of the garages, and replace them with low-income housing.”

How bad is it for Bronx Parking LLC? According to Gonzalez its garages are 38 percent full on Yankee game days. When the stadium is idle, they have a total of 70 regular customers for 9,000 spaces.

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As the operator of the taxpayer-financed Yankee Stadium parking garages heads toward default, there’s no longer any question that providing so much parking in such a transit-rich location was a mistake on the scale of Carl Pavano’s contract. The decision to give up $2.5 million in city taxes and $5 million in state revenue has proven a poor investment indeed. The question, at this point, is what comes next.

One idea, from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., is to convert one of the garages into a hotel. “One of the older garages is perfect for hotel development,” said John DeSio, a spokesperson for Diaz. Diaz advocated for a new Bronx hotel in his State of the Borough address two weeks ago, saying that “a new hotel would create hundreds of good-paying jobs offering health benefits, pension plans, and a chance for its workers to have a better life.”

While the garages were built on what used to be public parks, the South Bronx is unlikely to see that parkland return. “We have to come up with a plan that not only benefits the neighborhood but is palatable for the bondholders,” explained DeSio. The bondholders will have to okay any new use for the garages, so it will have to be a revenue-generator.

In terms of parking policy more broadly, DeSio said that while there aren’t any major developments where parking is an issue currently being considered by the borough president’s office, “I’m sure that we’d have to take to heart what happened here in the future.” (Plans for a new East Bronx mall anchored by a Target are too preliminary to comment on for now, he said.) DeSio also suggested that the private sector will notice this high-profile case of wasting resources on providing an excessive supply of parking.

In news that should surprise no one, the taxpayer-financed Yankee Stadium parking garages have been declared an unmitigated disaster.

Anyone could have seen the deal was a loser from the start — that a sports stadium served by subways, buses and a new commuter rail station, a stadium that would have fewer seats for fans, would have no need to increase parking stock by 55 percent. Then there was the dirty business of seizing public parks, and counting on the fact that the garages would attract drivers year-round — drivers who would be willing to pay more to park at the stadium than at the nearby Gateway Center mega-mall — to an area that neither wanted nor needed more car traffic. It was a scheme so predictably wrong that no private developer wanted any part of it.

Among those privy to the nuts and bolts of the deal, it seemed the only ones oblivious to the fact of its eminent failure were former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and the folks at the New York City Industrial Development Agency, the financing arm of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. In an act of blind faith or incestuous backroom dealing — take your pick — the IDA issued well over $200 million in triple tax-exempt bonds to the non-profit (ha ha) Bronx Parking Development Corporation to build and operate the garages.

Four years later, as Crain’s reports, the garages are a bust — with “more competition than any party involved anticipated,” they “were never more than 60 [percent] full on game days.” Bronx Parking is expected to default on the bonds, and the neighborhood has thousands of unused parking spaces where there was once public parkland.

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The subsidy for the new Yankee Stadium's 9,000 parking spaces keeps turning into a worse deal for New York City taxpayers. Juan Gonzalez reports in the Daily News that the garage operator is deep in the red, even after last year's extended championship season:

As of this month, Bronx Parking Development LLC owes the city $8.7 million in back rent and interest. That tab will soon grow to more than $10 million because city officials have allowed the firm to defer the rest of this year's rent as well.

Meanwhile, Bronx Parking, which has no connection to the Yankees, has yet to pay a nickel in property taxes.

One thing I'd add to Gonzalez's excellent piece is that this whole outcome was predictable, given the sordid politics behind the Yankee Stadium deal. Back in 2007, the geniuses on the board of the NYC Industrial Development Agency approved the subsidized parking deal before conducting an economic feasibility study. As Gonzalez notes, profitable Yankee Stadium garages now appear to be a delusion of the wishful thinkers at the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

The larger point is that the current situation proves the folly of the initial parking subsidies. Perversely, if the city is ever going to see revenue materialize from these monstrous garages, it's in their interest to see more cars drive to Yankee Stadium and flood the streets of the South Bronx. That pretty much sums up why a city that's purportedly committed to a sustainability plan should never subsidize parking.

Former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, widely credited as the architect of PlaNYC, spoke at the Museum of the City of New York last week on the potential impact of Mayor Bloomberg's signature program. According to City Room, Doctoroff considers the two-year-old environmental blueprint on par with such grand projects as Central Park and the development of the Manhattan street grid.

Among the outcomes so far: The conversion of 15 percent of the taxi fleet to clean-fuel vehicles, the construction of 79 new playgrounds, $100 million a year to increase the energy efficiency of government buildings, 20 pilot projects to clean up city waterways, hundreds of miles of new bike lanes. Ninety-three percent of the 127 initiatives are under way, Mr. Doctoroff said.

"The biggest achievement of them all," he said, is a greenhouse-gas inventory showing a 2.5 percent reduction in citywide carbon emissions, "at a time when greenhouse gases in cities around the nation continue to increase."

There is little doubt that PlaNYC is an ambitious and noble undertaking, despite the failure of congestion pricing -- which Doctoroff rightly cites as a direct cause of the current MTA funding crisis. But it seems a little specious to brag about reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when the Bloomberg administration has continued to vigorously promote VMT-inducing suburban-style parking, a contradiction not lost on City Room commenters like Chris, who writes:

What’s most frustrating is how Bloomberg and his advisors fail to make some very basic connections between their policies, for example working for modest transit improvements while promoting development that is very parking-intensive. Bronx Terminal Market is a prime example of this. Big box development with considerable parking availability which will do exactly what it is designed for- bring more cars, congestion, and pollution into the city.

So give credit where credit is due, but so many people wish Bloomberg would connect the dots.

Indeed. Even as he lobbied for PlaNYC and congestion pricing, Doctoroff himself was a prime mover behind the Yankee Stadium parking deal and greenhouse gas catastrophes like the Gateway Center. There's the legal battle waged by the administration to bring some 20,000 parking spots to Hell's Kitchen. And just last week Bloomberg celebrated the opening of driving-intensive commercial development at the Gateway project -- one day after announcing a new "green" buildings initiative. In fact, when asked point blank by Streetsblog about the connection between more parking and more driving, the mayor either didn't understand the question or chose not to address it.

Chris believes there's something "far more complex than just ignorance" at work here. We agree. The question is, will the Bloomberg administration safeguard the progress of PlaNYC by reversing its disastrous parking policies?

Not that we need more evidence that the Yankee Stadium parking deal was rancid to the core, but a Saturday story in the Times reveals the sad details of the Bloomberg administration's push for luxury game day digs -- a 12-seat suite in left field -- for which it traded 250 spots to the team.

The parking spaces were given to the team for the private use of Yankees officials, players and others; the spaces were originally planned for public parking. The city also turned over the rights to three new billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway, and whatever revenue they generate, as part of the deal.

The quest for perks first made news months ago following an inquiry by Assembly Member Richard Brodsky, but the nature of recently uncovered e-mails between the team, the city, and the Economic Development Corporation is depressingly banal.

At another point, raw personal feelings emerged, as evidenced during this exchange, starting June 29, 2006, between top city officials about Randy Levine, the Yankees president.

"If we want a deal on the suite, he wants 250 spaces," Seth W. Pinsky, then the executive vice president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, wrote to Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor. After Mr. Doctoroff did not respond, Mr. Pinsky, a bit sheepishly, wrote the next day: "It comes down to how much we’re willing to rely on Randy’s word."

"Let’s not give," Mr. Doctoroff replied. "I don’t trust him."

The Daily News has more, including PDF files of some e-mails. The News notes that taxpayers could end up paying for the spots if stadium garages, as expected, take a loss.

And the kicker? Follow the jump for mind-bending quotes from Westchester's faux-populist-in-chief.

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Yesterday's City Limits article on Yankee Stadium parking contains a link to an interactive Google map, developed by author Mathilde Piard, of the stadium site and its surroundings. Users can click on the shaded areas for descriptions of each parking garage or surface lot, including how many cars it can hold and when it will be used.

Be sure to click on Garage A, formerly known as what was left of Macombs Dam Park, for the $237 million subsidy and free police parking feature.

 
A few weeks back Atlantic Yards Report posted a compendium of recent writings that point to the contradictions inherent in, and problems resulting from, parking requirements for urban development plans.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg's much-praised PlaNYC 2030 contains a glaring omission, a failure to address the antiquated anti-urban policy that mandates parking attached to new residential developments outside Manhattan, even when such developments, like Atlantic Yards, are justified precisely because they're located near transit hubs.

Transit-rich Manhattan isn't exempt from such requirements either, as the city fights in court to turn Hell's Kitchen parking maximums into minimums.

AYR cites a December New York Times op-ed, written by planners Alex Garvin and Nick Peterson, as one indicator that awareness of the parking paradox is entering the mainstream. And yesterday, Metro published a piece questioning the value of Community Benefits Agreements. Touted as a way to smooth possible tensions between neighborhoods and developers through a give-and-take planning process, some argue that CBAs are being abused by builders and the elected officials who support their projects.

This New York style of deal making worries California attorney Julian Gross. “The entire future of the community-benefits movement could be threatened by CBAs being sidetracked and taken over by developers and electeds who want to steer and channel the community participation,” he said. 

One result, in the case of Atlantic Yards and the new Yankee Stadium, is an influx of cars essentially legislated into neighborhoods that don't want them, even as the city preaches the virtues of sustainable growth. From that perspective, the hiring of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and other planning dream-teamers can seem less a sign of hope than another symptom of the city's schizophrenic approach to urban mobility -- unless, whether due to publicity or change from within, a lot more stuff like this happens.

Photo: Photogrammaton/Flickr

The Village Voice is reporting that Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion received $30,000 in campaign contributions from a firm that scored a $5 million air rights agreement for a pedestrian bridge to the new Yankee Stadium. 

Last summer the city agreed to pay $5 million to construct part of a pedestrian walkway to the new stadium over a piece of property on East 153rd Street, according to the Voice. That land is owned by the Glaser family, which operates G.A.L. Manufacturing, a successful elevator equipment company. Though the Glasers had previously never contributed money to local candidates, they gave the Carrion campaign a total of $30,000 around the time the air rights contract was signed.

The Glasers didn't return the Voice's phone calls. A spokesman for Carrion referred questions to his campaign office, which said, "The borough president has many first-time contributors, as people throughout the city have taken notice of his proven track record in governing."

The pedestrian bridge is a small but key piece of the massive stadium project because it connects the new Metro North station to the stadium property. An existing pedestrian bridge is considered too narrow and out of compliance with federal disability laws.

Under the deal signed last spring, the city agreed to pay $5 million to the Glasers for the air rights over their property to allow for widening and improving the concrete pedestrian bridge leading to the foot of Yankee Stadium. The air-rights deal will cost taxpayers almost as much as the $6.5 million that the city plans to spend actually renovating the bridge.

City officials say that the $5 million bought three things: access to the property for two years, the right to put the bridge over the property, and a piece of land on which to set a column that will support the bridge.

As Streetsblog readers know, mayoral hopeful Carrion has been an outspoken supporter of the new Yankee Stadium and its publicly-subsidized parking decks, despite community opposition to the extra year-round traffic the project promises to bring to the polluted South Bronx. After the contentious parking deal cleared its last hurdle, Carrion bragged that the stadium would set off a chain reaction of development in the area.

How much his constituents will benefit, or suffer, from that development remains to be seen. But Carrion's mayoral campaign is making out quite nicely. In addition to the $30K from the Glasers, the Voice reports that his campaign has accepted over $34,000 from Related Companies, which is building the controversial Gateway Mall complex near the stadium -- a project criticized for, among other things, its auto-oriented design.

As it happens, according to the Voice, "At the same time that G.A.L. negotiated the $5 million air-rights deal, Related got $1.2 million from Metro North for an easement over a small sliver of its property to allow for the widening of rail tracks."

Last week AMNY ran a profile of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., playing on the angle that he may make a run for mayor in two years. The piece is mostly flattering, but does make mention of Carrion's controversial support for the new Yankee Stadium, which, as Streetsblog readers are probably sick of hearing by now, will bring ~4,000 parking spaces to what was public park land, further polluting the asthma-stricken South Bronx with additional year-round traffic.

Carrion is unapologetic in his advocacy of the stadium, as well as the $225 million in taxpayer-subsidized parking that will come with it.

Carrion gives himself credit for helping to "turn the tide" in the Bronx from "an acceptance of failure" to an environment in which investors are optimistic enough to put millions of dollars into housing, parkland and a new stadium for the Yankees.

In today's Daily News, Carrion refers to last week's approval of parking deck financing as "yet another important step toward realizing the goal of investment and community participation in the redevelopment of this area."

But not everyone would paint such a rosy picture. Last year Carrion was accused of purging community board members who opposed the stadium project. More recently, some South Bronx residents have vowed to fight construction of the garages. Simply put, they don't want the traffic or the pollution necessitated by an auto-dependent vision of economic prosperity.

Ironically, in the AMNY profile, Carrion also makes a case for congestion pricing.

"The fact that we can reduce millions of tons of particulate matter from the environment, and reduce the heat effect that we create and get more people to live healthy is a good thing. It's the objective that's more important than the inconvenience."

Carrion may not see the disconnect between his negative view of traffic congestion his zeal to bring more of it to the South Bronx, but others do. Again, the Daily News:

"All along I've been opposed to the stadium and the traffic and congestion it would bring to the neighborhood," [Council Member Helen] Foster said. "And this [garage] project will just encourage even more people to drive to the west Bronx."

Many of Foster's constituents worry the 9,000 parking spaces around the stadium will turn their already traffic- and asthma-choked neighborhood into a de facto park-and-ride hub -- especially if the mayor's Manhattan congestion pricing plan becomes reality.