Yankee Stadium parking in its natural state. Photo: Daily News

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.

On the other hand, from a neighborhood perspective about the only thing worse than a bunch of empty garages would be a bunch of full garages, a silver lining brought about by malfeasance on the part of the IDA, which approved the parking deal before conducting an economic feasibility study. Also, aides to Mayor Bloomberg tell Gonzalez that neither the city nor the IDA is responsible for backing the bonds.

The garages, however, were exempted from rent and taxes unless they turned a profit, so taxpayers probably shouldn’t expect a return on their investment. More than anything, Damiani sees those empty buildings as an ugly monument to the misplaced priorities of the Bloomberg administration, whose legacy of environmental stewardship and progressive transportation policies will be undercut by acres of new parking across the city.

“This community didn’t need thousands of parking spots,” says Damiani. “I have run out of adjectives to describe how bad this is.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz is hoping that a new hotel can replace excess parking near Yankee Stadium. Photo: Crain's.

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.

Photo: Crain's

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.

The potential irony has some in the community seething.

“Our community loves its parks, and we could always use more,” said Pastor Wenzell Jackson, chairman of Bronx Community Board 4, which includes the stadium and the surrounding area. “Now there’s just empty parking garages that are not benefiting the community.”

Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. and others are hoping to draw a hotel to the area, which would presumably make use of some of the excess stadium parking. Bronx Parking officials, meanwhile, blame cheaper rates at Gateway Center, and “Metro-North and its new train station … which the company said is reducing the number of cars — the very purpose for building the station (with public money).” But not everyone considers more traffic a solution.

“The first step should be to reconsider how they’re using these parking lots,” said Lourdes Zapata, senior vice president of SoBro, the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. “Looking at them exclusively for parking is a shortsighted way of looking at development in this area.”

“Shortsighted” — a generous word for a billion-dollar subsidy based on a foundation of extortion and cronyism, rather than sound economics and community interest.

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.

The House That Subsidies Built: It's now in the city's financial interest to see more traffic overwhelm the streets around Yankee Stadium. Photo: Simon Akam/Bronx Beat

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.

Photo: Getty via Daily Intel

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?

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.

Mr. Brodsky said what emerges from the e-mail correspondence is a sense of entitlement ingrained in Bloomberg officials. He said that the city appeared to be pushing for use of the suite for not just regular-season games, but for the playoffs and the World Series, and for special events like concerts, too.

"There’s this 'Alice in Wonderland' quality to the question of, what is the public interest here and who’s protecting it?" said Mr. Brodsky, who conducted a hearing on the issue of public financing of sports stadiums this summer. "We can’t find the money for the M.T.A., or schools, or hospitals, and these folks are used to the perks and good things of life, and expect them."

Richard Brodsky railing about entitlements and perks -- in the name of the MTA? We are through the looking glass, indeed.

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

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."

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.

Under the agreement, the city will give up some $2.5 million in taxes, with an estimated $5 million forfeited by the state. And the asthma-plagued South Bronx will get almost 4,000 new parking spaces, in garages the city aims to draw traffic to year-round.

Today's approval of the Yanks' parking subsidy by the board of the NYC Industrial Development Agency can only be described as a fait accompli. Despite last month's surprising postponement, caused in part by the IDA's failure to provide requested information to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion (himself a parking subsidy supporter) -- not to mention the revelation of one sad, shocking detail after another in the local media -- the unanimous vote came with relatively little discussion, one item on an agenda of about a dozen. The entire meeting took less than an hour.

Still, there were a few noteworthy aspects surrounding the decision:

• it was announced that an economic feasibility study is now underway (as opposed to, well, conducting same before the package was approved);
• the IDA signed off on the project though a finalized ground lease apparently does not yet exist;
• the deal includes possibly as many as 600 free parking spaces for the Yankees (Streetsblog has a call in to the IDA to confirm the number);
  
• Carrion's representative on the IDA board, Rafael Salaberrios, was not present for the vote, but walked in shortly after it occurred.

Bettina Damiani, Project Director of Good Jobs New York, an NGO that has tracked the stadium project closely, says the IDA's promise of 12 full-time and 70 part-time parking garage jobs, with an average wage of $11 an hour, hardly justifies the impact on surrounding South Bronx neighborhoods.

"There would be a stronger economic benefit if they threw cash off the elevated subway," Damiani says.

Fittingly, Damiani is headed to Washington, DC, tomorrow to testify at a Congressional hearing on how professional sports stadiums shift funds away from public infrastructure.

Following up on his tour of the smelly swath of plastic turf the Yankees installed in the South Bronx after turning actual park land into a stadium construction site, Neil deMause reports in the Village Voice that a clause in the Yanks' lease agreement with the city -- initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and extended by Mayor Bloomberg -- allows reimbursements for stadium "planning" expenses. As of 2005, deductions include apparent write-offs for food, alcohol, and thousands of dollars in schwag, like caps and souvenir crystal baseballs.

Seems the Yankees haven't been spending enough on stadium "planning" to take full advantage of the rent break, so to justify additional deductions, the club began handing over loads of receipts to the Parks Department.

[W]hereas the earlier receipts were limited to stadium-related expenses -- although questionable ones, like the $700-an-hour lobbyist bills and restaurant tabs for engineering consultants -- by late 2005, the files had begun to look like those of an organization hastily trying to spend down its account by billing the public for everything but the kitchen sink.

Here's a sample itemized list, courtesy Good Jobs New York:

• $31,364 in food and bar tabs at Yankee Stadium for two nights of the 2005 post season
• $1,978 for a dozen crystal baseballs
  
• $8,600 in "rivalry" wool caps for home games against Boston and Toronto
• $1037 for 550 logo baseballs for an annual sales meeting
• $2,037 in gifts for corporate clients like Sony, Ford and Continental Airlines
• $25,000 for office space near Newark Airport
• $10,145 for press room rental
• $1,948 for party for Verizon
• $78 to ship batting helmets from Yankee Stadium to Tropicana Field

Images of actual receipts are here, here and here.

GJNY has issued a media release calling for an audit by City Comptroller (and potential mayoral candidate) William Thompson -- something the city has not done since 2004, when it examined the Yankees' stadium planning costs from 2001 and 2002.

"Considering the impact the new Yankee Stadium has had on the taxpayers and the neighborhood," reads the GJNY statement, "Good Jobs New York calls on Comptroller William Thompson to bring up to date all audits of the team to ensure no improper expenditures were in fact borne by the taxpayers."

Here are snapshots of the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium last Sunday. (The Yanks beat Toronto, 7-5.) Despite the perceived parking hardship, average attendance at the stadium has been 52,739 this season, an all-time record.

Naturally, this casts further doubt on the need for all those (all together now) publicly funded parking spaces -- a project that has already caused actual hardship for South Bronx residents who, to add injury to injury, saw neighborhood park land poached and replaced (temporarily, at least) by a stinky plastic heat island.

Assuming the garages are built as planned, and prove as unprofitable as expected, will the scoreboard still "strongly suggest using public transportation"?

The Bronx Borough Board was expected to take up the stadium parking issue today, but Streetsblog has received word that it was not on the agenda after all. Though this will presumably affect the scheduling of an IDA vote to issue the $225 million in tax exempt bonds sought to finance construction of three stadium parking garages, an article in today's Sun -- referring to the complex as  "the most expensive baseball park ever built" -- quotes a Yankees rep who says the project is proceeding as planned.

The Yankees have refused to provide interviews with those involved in the construction of the new stadium. A spokeswoman for the Yankees, Alice McGillion, said, "We are on schedule with construction, on budget, and fully expect to be operational and ready for opening day 2009."

If you thought it was bad enough that the city seized public park land in the asthma-choked South Bronx, turned that public land over to the New York Yankees to use for parking, and is currently on course to have taxpayers subsidize said parking to the tune of $8,000 per space, well, you'd be wrong. It gets worse.

The triple tax exempt bond plan for the new Yankee Stadium was hatched when no developers stepped up to bid on stadium parking deck construction, and their inherent unprofitability has now led the city's Industrial Development Agency to seek year round operation of the garages.

Via onNYTurf, the Observer does the math:

If all the new parking slots (9,179 total) are filled every game day (81 times a year), the operator will bring in $18.59 million annually from Yankees-related revenue. But the $225 million in bonds, if paid back over 30 years at 6.5 percent, would require $17.04 million a year in payments.

That leaves just $1.55 million a year for salaries, maintenance, utilities and other operational costs—not to mention rent that the operator, the Bronx Parking Development Corporation, is supposed to pay the city.

“With recent and ongoing South Bronx developments, such as the development of the Bronx Terminal Market and the new Metro North Station, we expect there to be strong demand for parking on non-game days, which certainly help the financial viability of the project,” a spokeswoman e-mailed The Observer.

So, with the stadium deal, the city hopes to get into the business of inducing parking demand -- in an area it says will benefit from congestion pricing.

Photo: The Foo Fighter/Flickr

If anyone knows more about any of these folks, or if you spot any outdated info, please share.

The IDA board:

• Robert C. Leiber, Chairman. President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Former real estate executive. Mayoral appointee.
  
• Derek Park, Vice Chairman. Senior Executive Vice-President, Cohane Rafferty Securities. Mayoral appointee.
  
• Amanda Burden, ex officio. City Planning Director, City Planning Commission Chair.
  
• Michael Cardozo, ex officio. New York City's Corporation Counsel.
• Albert V. De Leon. General Counsel, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken.
• Dan Doctoroff, ex officio. Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding.
• Joseph I. Douek. Chairman and CEO, Willoughby's Konica Imaging Center, friend of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and subject of this 2006 critique on Room EIght.
• Kevin Doyle. Executive Vice President, Local 32BJ, "the largest property services union in the country." Doyle was profiled by the Observer when he joined the IDA board. Appointed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
• Bernard Haber. Member of Queens Community Board 11. Queens Borough President appointee.
  
• Rafael Salaberrios. President, Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation. Chairman, Bronx Tourism Council. Bronx Borough President appointee.
  
• Robert D. Santos. Vice President for Campus Planning and Facilities Management, City College of New York. Former executive with construction firm Lehrer McGovern Bovis, Inc. Former Assistant Commissioner, NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Former Deputy Commissioner for Operations, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Mayoral appointee.
  
• William C. Thompson, ex officio. New York City Comptroller.

Alternates:

• Barry Dinerstein. Deputy Director for Housing, Economic Development and Infrastructure Planning, NYC Planning Department.
• John Graham. City Comptroller appointee.
• Angela Sun. Doctoroff appointee.
• Leonard Wasserman. Chief, Economic Development Division, New York City Law Department (Corporation Counsel). 

At a hearing last week, residents of the South Bronx, along with public advocates, protested the $225 million triple tax exempt bond issue, which would be used to finance the construction of three stadium parking garages. Speakers testified that making so many parking spots available would encourage stadium-goers to drive to the asthma plagued area, rather than take public transit -- and at taxpayer expense, as the bonds are estimated to cost New Yorkers some $8,000 per space in lost revenue.

Also at last week's hearing, a representative of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., Deputy Director for Planning & Development Paula Luria Caplan, told the IDA that Carrion's office had been denied "vital information" concerning the project, and said the IDA should not act before "statutorily required approval" by the Bronx Borough Board. (Streetsblog contacted Carrion's office for an update, but had not received a reply as of this writing.)

Today's session, closed to public comment, featured no discussion of the parking bonds. Instead, it was announced that several IDA board members had concerns and questions, and that the matter would be decided later at a special-called meeting, for which no date was given.

"I hope that the board realizes that you can't dress this up pretty," says Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, an NGO that opposes the Yankees parking subsidy and has followed it closely (witness GJNY's 28-page chronicle, "Insider Baseball"). "You can put lipstick on it all you want. It's still a parking garage. The IDA has a tough job ahead of them."

At a sparsely attended public hearing in Lower Manhattan, Margaret Collins of Save Our Parks told the New York City Industrial Development Agency (IDA) that a "barely contained rage" is simmering over the traffic the new stadium is expected to bring to the area. Surveys show that lack of recreational space and pollution are the top concerns in South Bronx neighborhoods, Collins said -- problems that were exacerbated when the Yankees seized public park land for its stadium complex, and which could yet worsen once its proposed 9,000 parking spaces are put to use.

Though the new facility will have 5,000 fewer seats, and will be served by a new Metro-North station, current plans call for it to have 2,500 more parking spots than the existing stadium. Three new parking garages (of four originally planned) will be financed through $225 million in triple tax exempt bonds, if the IDA approves such action, at a public cost of some $8,000 per space. A vote could come as early as next Tuesday, September 11. The IDA board votes in closed session.

Noting the low turnout for the hearing, Collins -- herself testifying with sleeping infant in tow -- pointed out that most affected residents can not make it downtown for a meeting in the middle of a workday. She warned that lack of public attendance should not be confused with lack of public engagement. 

"The community is not sleeping on this question," Collins said.

Speaking after an unusual plea for access was presented to the IDA on behalf of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., Collins bristled that politicians had signed on to the stadium project without knowing what they were agreeing to. Carrion, a vocal stadium proponent, has been denied what his office termed "vital information" regarding its financing, even though he, like all borough presidents, has an appointee who serves on the IDA board.

The IDA is the financing arm of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The IDA board is made up of 15 members and alternates, including City Planning Director Amanda Burden and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff.

While she was outnumbered by IDA board members and staff, Collins was not alone in testifying against the project. Joyce Hogi, who has lived in the vicinity of Yankee Stadium for 30 years, objected to the "snarling traffic" that "consumes" the area, and said the new garages would amount to "induced demand" for otherwise unneeded parking, "providing an incentive to drive into an already overburdened neighborhood." Of the new Metro-North station, Hogi asked, "We spend millions on public transportation and now we plan to spend millions to encourage them not to take it?"

Hogi suggested public moneys would be better spent on upgrades to the Melrose Metro-North and 161st Street subway stations, which would benefit surrounding neighborhoods year-round.

Bettina Damiani, director of Good Jobs New York, said that the parking subsidy, if approved, would bring the public commitment to the new stadium to a total of approximately $795 million.

Photo: Michael Dietsch/Flickr

Testifying before the NYC Industrial Development Agency (IDA), which is poised to issue over $200 million in triple tax exempt bonds to the "Bronx Parking Development Company" for parking deck construction, Deputy Director for Planning & Development Paula Luria Caplan said Carrion has not received "vital information" regarding project financing.

Here is the testimony submitted by Caplan on behalf of Carrion, in its entirety:

The new Yankee Stadium project represents a remarkable achievement for the Borough of the Bronx and the City of New York. As this board is aware, the Borough President has been involved in this redevelopment project from its inception and has always insisted that both the community and its representatives are thoroughly engaged in this process.

The Borough President is deeply concerned that after repeated requests we still have not received vital information regarding the details of the Bronx Parking Development Company financing. Specifically, the Borough President's office has requested the following:

A copy of the draft lease agreement;
A copy of the feasibility study;
An explanation of the increase in the deal size from $190 million to $218 million;
and details regarding the elimination of Lot D from the parking facility after 2010.

Finally, the Borough President is concerned as to whether this project can move forward on September 11th without the statutorily required approval of the Bronx Borough Board. In order to make an informed decision at the September 11th IDA Meeting, the Borough President must receive this information immediately.

Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, who also offered testimony, said that it is unheard of for a borough president to resort to making such a statement at an IDA hearing, considering that each borough president has an appointee on the IDA board.

Complete coverage still to come.

As Streetsblog reported back in April, the city is set to subsidize thousands of parking spaces for the new Yankee Stadium by issuing hundreds of millions in tax-exempt bonds for parking deck construction.

The Post reported this week that one of the four planned parking structures has been scuttled, but the rest remain on the table, in spite of a new Metro-North station that should mitigate stadium parking demand. Tomorrow the NYC Industrial Development Agency (IDA) will hold a hearing on the bond issue, which by some calculations would cost city and state taxpayers over $8,000 per parking space.

Here's a summary from Good Jobs New York, which has been keeping a watchful eye on the deal:

The New York Yankees are currently building a new stadium one block north of its existing location at East 161 Street and River Avenue in the Bronx. The project would also include the construction of three nearby parking garages containing almost 4,000 spaces. The proposed stadium and parking facilities are being developed on over 20 acres of frequently used public parkland, and city, state, and federal subsidies for the project exceed $700 million in direct spending and tax breaks.

 

The New York City Industrial Development Agency (IDA) is proposing to offer additional subsidies for the construction of the three new garages and the renovation of existing garages and surface lots in the area. The IDA is proposing to offer the garage developers $219 million in triple tax-exempt bonds (up from an earlier amount of $190 million) to finance the development of the parking facilities. The city estimates this will mean over $2 million in forgone city income taxes (not to mention millions more on the state and federal level). In addition, the city will no longer collect a percentage of the revenues earned at the garages.

Perhaps, instead of a parking subsidy, the city sees the tax break as an investment in what some hope will be a Bronx development boom. Centering on the stadium, some $500 million in retail development is planned for the area. Retailers have also pledged to reserve 1,200 game day parking spots for Yankee fans.

 
Meanwhile, the ball club has stalled on a promise to repay nearby residents for seizing public park land for its new field and parking complex, in the form of an $800,000 annual endowment to area non-profits. Metro reports that the organization that is supposed to distribute the funds has not yet registered with the state, and its first annual report, due in April, never materialized.

"The parks were taken in eight days without one public hearing," complained [Geoffrey] Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. "The Yankees wasted no time in seizing the public's land, but they're in no hurry when it's time to pay up."

Croft charged the promised payoff was actually a "pittance," considering the neighborhood, which is plagued by asthma, lost "70 percent of their trees."

More coverage of the parking deal can be found here.

Tomorrow's IDA hearing, which is open to the public, will be at 10:00 a.m. at 110 William Street, 4th Floor.

 
Photo: hotdogger13/Flickr