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The Villager, May
19, 2005
Politicians Pile
on West Side Jets/Olympic Stadium
By Albert Amateau
About 500 anti-stadium partisans filled McCaffrey Park in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen
on Sunday afternoon to hear neighbors, elected officials and political
candidates tee off on Mayor Bloomberg’s drive to build a 75,000-seat New
York Sports and Convention Center stadium over the 30th St. West Side rail yards.
Mayoral candidates who whipped up the crowd on May 14
against what they called a giveaway to the New York Jets and a waste of
public money, included City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Congressmember
Anthony Weiner and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer.
“No West Side stadium, build it in Queens,” said Weiner,
whose Congressional district encompasses parts of Queens as well as Brooklyn.
Miller referred to his leadership in the City Council
action last week that prevents the city from using payments in lieu of
taxes, or PILOT’s, to finance the stadium. “We expect the mayor to veto it
and we will override the veto,” Miller predicted.
Assemblymember Scott Stringer and Councilmember Bill
Perkins, candidates for Manhattan
borough president, were there and so was Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum,
seeking reelection. Carlos Manzano, a resident of Clinton and candidate for
Manhattan
borough president, also made a stand against the proposed stadium.
Stringer and Gotbaum reminded the crowd that they have
joined one of two lawsuits against the city to stop the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority from selling the rail yards to the Jets for a
stadium. Moreover, Gotbaum remarked that the proposed stadium would have to
be expanded beyond its 75,000-seat capacity to accommodate the 2012
Olympics, which the city hopes to win.
Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, whose West Side
district includes Chelsea and Clinton, and State Senator Liz Krueger,
representing Manhattan’s East
Side, also blasted the proposal by the Bloomberg and Pataki
administrations to spend public money on a stadium instead of on schools
and affordable housing.
Stadium opponents at the rally said they were encouraged
by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s statement on Fri., May 12, that the
state Public Authorities Control Board would probably not vote on the
stadium at its May 18 meeting. Silver, Governor Pataki and State Senate
Majority Leader Joseph Bruno control the three P.A.C.B. votes, and a No
vote from one of them could stop the project. Silver and Bruno indicated
last week that they thought the P.A.C.B. vote should wait until the
lawsuits are settled.
City Councilmember Christine Quinn and State Senator Tom
Duane, who represent the Chelsea and Clinton neighborhoods where the rail
yards are located, were cheered as they denounced the stadium and its
impact on auto traffic already bumper-to-bumper during rush hours. Quinn
and Duane are among the plaintiffs in Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yards
Neighborhood Association suit to block the stadium
“If the stadium is built, what happens at halftime when
everybody flushes the toilets at the same time? The West Side would be
flooded,” quipped Duane, referring to the North River sewage treatment
plant in West Harlem, which is already
handling storm and sanitary sewage beyond rated capacity.
Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes
the West Side, Lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn,
also spoke against the stadium and the intense promotion of it by Dan
Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development. “Wouldn’t it be nice
to have a deputy mayor for economic development instead of a deputy mayor
for a stadium?” Nadler quipped.
City Councilmember Gail Brewer of the Upper West Side
and Assemblymember Adriano Espaillat of Washington Heights
joined the rally organized by the Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yard Neighborhood
Association. Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, representing the East Side,
agreed that a stadium over the West Side rail yards would generate terrible
traffic jams all over Manhattan,
especially since the plan does not provide for any parking at all.
Community Board 4 Chairperson Walter Mankoff also
denounced the stadium plan. The community board last year cited an
environmental impact statement that foresaw traffic problems associated
with the stadium.
The crowd rocked and later danced to the live music of
Andrew Vladek and the Magnificent Seven, a Lower East
Side band. An anti-stadium letter-writing campaign that rally
leaders promoted on Sunday resulted in 25,000 letters and e-mails urging
Governor Pataki, Assembly Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Bruno to hold
off approval of the stadium.
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