Another day...another story. This one starts slow, but gets to the real heart of several issues.
The next vote (there's always a "next vote" in these things) might be delayed until July, after the International Olympic Committee chooses a city. "The stadium game has only begun."
My eyes went "kaboggle" -- like triple "suprised" emoticons -- when Anderson began to work through the numbers, comparing the Jets Palace to the new Wembley and the re-built Soldier Field.
Jets' Schedule Is Featuring Both Politics and Paris
By DAVE ANDERSON
IN the Jets' drive for a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, they made a first down past midfield yesterday, not a touchdown.
For those who favor the proposed stadium, the Jets aren't even near the red zone, much less the goal line. For those who oppose it, there is plenty of time for an interception by the state's Public Authorities Control Board, the International Olympic Committee, or the litigation threatened by several foes, notably Cablevision.
For all the anticipation of a 2010 Super Bowl-on-the-Hudson, the tickets have not been printed. And may never be.
Yes, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board has now approved the $720 million offer by the Jets and four real-estate developers for the development rights above the railroad yards from West 30th Street to West 33rd Street and from 11th to 12th Avenue, the proposed site of the retractable-roofed, 75,000-seat stadium.
But the state's Public Authorities Control Board may postpone its vote on the stadium until after the I.O.C.'s announcement July 6 in Singapore of the site for the 2012 Summer Games.
Gov. George E. Pataki is on the state board, but the two other members, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, have not only expressed doubts about the stadium, but see no need to provide state funds until after the I.O.C. vote.
If Paris is chosen for the 2012 Games, as many Olympic watchers expect, the stadium supporters, especially Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, would lose their most glamorous argument.
Perhaps more important, the cost of this stadium, especially to the Jets, keeps rising by the month, if not the week or the day. In the 53 weeks since the original news conference featuring Bloomberg and Pataki at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center last year, the stadium cost has jumped from $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion and now, according to the latest estimates, to $2.2 billion.
The state and the city have each promised to contribute only $300 million for a total of $600 million for the project, leaving the Jets on the hook for $1.6 billion.
By themselves, the Jets, meaning the owner Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid fortune, will be spending more than the entire cost of the world's most expensive stadium, the $1.4 billion Wembley Stadium near London, and more than twice as much as the recent $630 million renovation of Soldier Field in Chicago.
If the West Side stadium's cost has increased $800 million in a year, how much more will the Jets, who pledged to absorb any excess costs, be on the hook for in the years to come? How much money does Woody Johnson have? Or how much money does he and the Jets financiers believe the stadium would generate?
"I've pledged," Johnson said a year ago at that news conference, "to bring the team back to where it belongs - here in Manhattan."
Manhattan? Only original American Football League fans remember that the Jets' ancestors, the Titans, played at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan from 1960 to 1962, before the Jets closed it in 1963. To most fans, the Jets belong in Queens, where they played at Shea Stadium from 1964 until departing in 1984 for Giants Stadium.
Queens, meaning somewhere in the Shea Stadium area, is where Johnson should be building a stadium that would be much less expensive and much more popular with the Jets' season-ticket holders. And a dazzling new football palace near Shea would cost less than half of the Jets' ridiculous share of the West Side stadium.
Instead, as the Jets' investment in the stadium has risen to $1.6 billion, it's more and more obvious that Johnson doesn't want the stadium for the team, the city and the fans as much as he wants it for himself and his legacy - despite the civic need elsewhere for that $600 million the city and the state would contribute.
And should the Jets get the stadium, their fans would be the first to suffer. Johnson would try to recoup with higher ticket prices, not to mention likely seat-license fees - pro football's form of legal extortion - as well as higher luxury-box prices.
For the 2005 season, Jets' tickets are $90, $80, $70 and $60, depending on the location (Giants tickets are $80 and $70). Of the 117 Giants Stadium luxury suites sold by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (including season tickets to the Giants and Jets games), 71 sell for $140,000, 26 for $165,000, 16 for $280,000, and 4 for $360,000.
How high would the Jets franchise dare price its luxury suites in a West Side stadium? And would all the luxury suites sell if the prices are too high?
But that's fodder for the future. For now, as Chad Pennington could tell Woody Johnson, the closer the Jets get to the red zone, the tougher the opposing defense gets. Watch out for a blitz by the state's Public Authorities Control Board, or a fumble recovery by the I.O.C., or an interception created by one of those lawsuits.
The stadium game has only begun.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/sport ... erson.html
Grumble 
I won't even get started with the World Trade Center fiasco.
