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June 06, 2005
Jets talks go nowhere fast
It's D-Day, but possibly not for the New York Jets stadium. After a long day of negotiations yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had still been unable to sway state assembly leader Sheldon Silver into backing his West Side NFL-and-Olympic stadium plan. As he left City Hall at about 4:30 pm, Silver told reporters: "I don't know if there's been any progress except for the fact that we're talking."
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee issued is evaluation reports for the five cities bidding for the 2012 games, and the results were less unfavorable to New York than had been expected. According to the Olympic-watch site gamesbids.com:
The International Olympic Committee evaluation reports released this morning for the 2012 Olympic bids seem to favor Paris, London and New York - but the committee claim the cities were not ranked.
New York's received high technical marks but the report notes that the Olympic Stadium and International Broadcast Centre had not been approved. New York's public support is the lowest of the five bids based on an IOC poll.
While New York doesn't provide the same comprehensive financial guarantees that the other bids boast, the IOC didn't mention it as a negative issue and instead pointed to the strong revenue generating potential of the bid.
When I last spoke to gamesbids.com's Rob Livingstone, he was anticipating that New York's half-billion-dollar contingency budget wouldn't be enough to satisfy the IOC (which demands that cities promise to cover unlimited budget shortfalls for the Games), so in this case New York's bid looks to have dodged a bullet.
Other bullets, though, hit their mark. While NYC2012 issued a statement that "the single negative point in the IOC evaluation is the lack of approval for the Stadium" (yes, they capitalize it like that), newyorkgames.org points out that the Olympic Village and media center are up in the air as well:
The comments are: "Tendering and approval processes for the Olympic stadium and IBC, sites essential to the hosting of the Games, were still in progress at the time of the Commission�s visit and no guarantees were provided that these sites would be available for the construction of Olympic infrastructure" and "New York could not provide a guarantee for the use of the Olympic Square site (Olympic stadium and IBC)."
To the extent NYC2012 says the stadium must be immediately approved, they then must also state that the IBC must be immediately approved.
The International Broadcast Center is to be on the Eastern Rail Yard, and there is no deal between the MTA and the City for this site. ...
The lack of approval for the village is a concern: "Compulsory purchase procedures may be required to obtain the proposed site for the Olympic Village. These procedures could delay land acquisition, which may impact on construction schedules." This is because "The surface area of the village would be 25 hectares, of which 10 hectares still need to be acquired."
