[HK-Online] The Big, Bad Stadium is Back - 7/12/00

[kitchen]

Hell's Kitchen Online                                7/12/00
http://hellskitchen.net "All the News the Times Won't Print"
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IN THIS ISSUE ...

1. Olympic Stadium Presentation - Wed. July 12
2. Quinn, Duane, Schneiderman on Olympic Stadium
3. New York's Big Dream: 2012 Olympics (Times)
4. Rudy Goes For The Gold (Observer)

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TWO YEARS AGO, voters became nauseous at City Council Speaker Peter 
Vallone's pandering over the proposed building of a new Yankee Stadium in 
the West Side Penn Station Rail Yards south of 34th Street, while at the 
same time he was railroading through the Eighth Avenue Air Rights.

But now a new [and real] proposal for a stadium at the same location 
forebears an even greater threat to the entire West Side. A private 
committee, NYC2012, with the apparent cheerleading of Mayor Giuliani, is 
proposing to build an Olympic Stadium between Clinton/Hell's Kitchen and 
Chelsea. The "Hell's Kitchen Olympics" -- you heard it right!

Oh, that's not all. They want to move Madison Square Garden a few blocks to 
the west, extend the #7 subway westward, a few other "goodies" and have it 
all tied into the Javits Center. And after the 2012 Olympics -- the New 
York Jests would return from the Meadowlands so "three yards and a cloud of 
dust" will mean something other than watching a New York Apple Tours bus in 
a traffic jam.

But if anyone thought Costco would exacerbate our gridlock [sic], just 
think what a stadium would bring to 9th, 10th and 11th Avenues as Olympic 
tourists (and later football fans) made their way into Manhattan for 
tailgate parties in the shadow of Macy's.

IT'S A NO-BRAINER. There's plenty of details to get out, but we thought it 
prudent to send out the following articles from a few months ago and invite 
community members to attend a presentation by the 2012 Committee at the CB4 
office tonight, Wednesday, July 12. It's a small room and there will 
undoubtedly be more opportunities to see what's in the works. But for now, 
this is the kickoff.

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PRESENTATION: ALEX GARVIN, 2012 OLYMPICS
South Hell's Kitchen Planning Committee
July 12 (Wed) at 6:00 PM
Community Board No. 4 Office, 330 West 42nd Street,
26th Floor (8th/9th Avenues)

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July 10, 2000

Hon. Rudolph Giuliani      Hon. George E. Pataki
Mayor                      Governor
City Hall                  The Executive Chamber, Capitol
New York, NY 10007         Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani:

We are writing to express our concern regarding the possible construction 
of a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. As elected officials from the 
West Side, we reiterate our opposition to a West Side stadium and urge you 
to open any and all present and future negotiations or discussions 
regarding such a facility to the affected communities. Any decisions made 
in this regard should occur in conjunction with area elected officials, 
Community Boards 2, 4, 5, and 7 and neighborhood and community 
organizations. Such collaborations should include a process in which the 
Community Boards can take public positions regarding the stadium.

It is our understanding that the present timing of a construction of a 
professional football or baseball stadium to be located on Manhattan’s West 
Side, south of 34th Street, impacts upon the NYC 2012 Olympic bid. In fact, 
we have been told that it is a “make or break” component and that in order 
for New York City’s 2012 bid to be considered viable by the United States 
Olympic Committee, commitments for the stadium complex would have to be 
fully in place by the 2002 Olympic selection period. While we know the NYC 
2012 Committee is independent of your administrations, the inclusion of the 
stadium as a necessary component of their proposal appears to be a factor 
which serves to add strength and speed to the quest for a professional 
football or baseball stadium on the West Side. Our opposition to a stadium 
in any form, regardless of whatever potentially positive secondary impacts 
it might have in the future, still stands.

The impact of a stadium on the West Side would be devastating. Our 
community suffers from some of the City’s heaviest traffic congestion and 
bears the brunt of much of its commercial and commuter traffic. A West Side 
stadium would greatly exacerbate this current situation and would provide 
little benefit to offset the enormous detriment to our neighborhoods — 
Hell’s Kitchen South, Clinton, Chelsea, Midtown, the West Village, and the 
Upper West Side.

That the City and/or the State would negotiate or participate in 
negotiations or discussions for such a facility without the direct input of 
the community is reprehensible. An enormous amount of time and energy are 
being put into comprehensively planning for the future of this 
neighborhood, in particular by the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association 
in conjunction with Community Board 4. Faced with an ever-changing 
Manhattan, our goal is to preserve the character, diversity, and 
mixed-income nature of our community.

The NYC 2012 Committee has already begun the process of meeting with 
community organizations and West Side elected officials to brief us on 
their overall proposal. We greatly appreciate their outreach efforts. 
Likewise, any negotiations on the part of the your administrations 
specifically for a NFL stadium — inside or outside of the context of an 
Olympic bid similarly must fully involve the West Side community.

We urge you to immediately share the current status of your plan, proposal, 
or vision for a West Side stadium and open the negotiating process to the 
affected communities. We would be more than happy to facilitate any 
community meetings to address this issue. We look forward to hearing from 
you shortly. Thank you.

Christine C. Quinn
Councilmember

Thomas K. Duane
State Senator

Eric Schneiderman
State Senator

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NEW YORK'S BIG DREAM: 2012 OLYMPICS
New York Times, March 15, 2000
By Thomas J. Lueck

A group intent on luring the 2012 Summer Olympics to New York City unveiled 
a plan at City Hall yesterday that would use new and existing arenas, 
stadiums and other structures stretching across the city, and from New 
Jersey to Long Island.

The athletes' village would be built on the 73-acre Queens West development 
site along the East River, across from the United Nations building. The 
village would later be converted to 5,000 units of housing.

The biggest project would be a new Olympic stadium, which advocates hope 
will rise at the rail yards on the West Side of Manhattan, a site that has 
been suggested by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for a new Yankee ballpark or a 
football stadium.

The group, a 150-member steering committee that includes an advisory board 
studded with celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld and Diana Ross, was formed 
more than a year ago. It faces a deadline of Dec. 15 to submit a 600-page 
application for the 2012 Summer Games to the United States Olympic 
Committee, which will select among New York and seven other candidates.

The winning entry will be submitted to the International Olympic Committee, 
which is expected to choose the site of the 2012 Summer Games by 2005.

"No event could better cap New York's remarkable resurgence than hosting 
the Olympic Games," said Mr. Giuliani, who met yesterday with leaders of 
the group, called NYC 2012.

Mr. Giuliani has pushed aggressively for private development of a domed 
Olympic stadium at the rail yards, near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

After the Summer Games, the mayor said, the stadium would be used for 
professional football and be the anchor for a larger swath of development, 
including two new hotels and an addition to the convention center.

The owner of the Jets football team, Robert Wood Johnson IV, has said he 
plans to leave Giants Stadium when the team's lease expires in 2008. The 
West Side is a possible new home for the Jets.

But advocates for a West Side stadium face hurdles not addressed yesterday 
by the steering committee, including objections from environmentalists and 
residents over the traffic it would generate.

The committee said the Olympics could be staged across a broad urban 
landscape, with soccer in Giants Stadium and boxing in the 369th Regiment 
Armory in Harlem, and almost all sites could be linked by ferry, train or 
subway.

"We could get virtually all athletes to their events without ever going on 
a road," said Daniel Doctoroff, a Wall Street executive and president of 
NYC 2012.

Describing the proposed West Side complex as the best option for an Olympic 
stadium, Mr. Doctoroff said the steering committee was also considering 
sites in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and the Sunnyside rail yards in Queens.

While any of the options would require a large infusion of private funds, 
he said, the committee could help defray costs, because the revenue 
generated from things like ticket sales to Olympic events and television 
rights is projected to be $3.6 billion, far more than the $1.7 billion 
estimated cost of staging the Games.

He said NYC 2012 had raised $4.6 million in contributions from several 
corporate sponsors.

The group is seeking $2.2 million more for the initial stage of its campaign.

In its meeting with the mayor yesterday, the group distributed copies of a 
code of ethics it had adopted that was clearly intended to prevent 
allegations of bribery and back-room dealing from arising, like the charges 
that surfaced a year ago against officials in Salt Lake City.

The code prohibits "unethical payments" to Olympic officials, including 
gifts, kickbacks or commissions.

The other places vying to be the United States candidate are Dallas, 
Houston, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla. Washington 
and Baltimore are working on a combined plan.

Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington and Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore 
held separate news conferences yesterday to tout their plan, which would 
use five locations around the region, including University of Maryland, 
where an Olympic village would be housed.

Dan Kenice, president of the Washington-Baltimore coalition that was formed 
to try to win the Olympics, said one of the area's major advantages was 
that almost all of the needed facilities were already built or under 
construction.

Mayor Giuliani shrugged off those rivals.

"All have significantly higher crime rates than New York," he said with a 
smile.

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RUDY GOES FOR THE GOLD
NY Observer, March 15, 2000
by Andrew Rice and Jason Gay

Some 100 members of the city’s power elite gathered in the pews in the old 
Board of Estimate room at City Hall on March 14 to plot the grandest and 
most ambitious public works project in more than a generation.

Ostensibly, the meeting was a coming-out party for the advisory board that 
Dan Doctoroff, a little-known money manager, has assembled in a bid to 
bring the Olympics to New York City in the summer of 2012. But really, the 
gathering was an invocation­an attempt to raise the spirit of Robert Moses.

Mingling at City Hall with various former Olympians and civic dreamers were 
Stephen Ross, the Columbus Circle developer; Howard Rubenstein, the public 
relations czar; Jed Bernstein, theater union boss; Tom Bernstein, the 
Chelsea Piers developer; Kevin O’Connor, the chief executive of Doubleclick 
Inc.; Lewis Rudin, the developer; Robert Nederlander, the theater owner; 
and, of course, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has yet to launch a major 
capital project but whose talent for sweeping aside naysayers and nigglers 
nonetheless energized the audience.

Their excitement grew as they watched a slide show of architectural 
renderings and fantastical maps, depicting a city transformed by new 
ferries, trains, stadiums, parks and neighborhoods. And their enthusiasm 
was understandable, considering that this was the biggest bid to 
reconfigure the face of the city since Moses, the master builder and 
original power broker, remade New York in the middle of the last century by 
giving us Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln 
Center and a host of highways, byways, beaches, dams and bridges.

Of course, it is no longer possible for one man, no matter how enormous his 
personality or ambitious his vision, to even attempt capital projects of 
such breadth and magnitude. The Moses phenomenon aroused such intense 
opposition that for over a generation it has been considered impossible to 
translate grand schemes into concrete.

But now, in his spirit, a convocation of the city’s power brokers has taken 
it upon itself to impose its vision for a massive public works project on a 
city that in recent years has settled for incremental, market-driven 
change. This group is in effect a hundred-headed Robert Moses­inspired by 
the economic boom, frustrated by decades of political paralysis and 
determined to rescucitate the long-vanished art of getting things built on 
a grand scale with brute political force. If they do get it done, after 
all, their legacies will be secured well into the 21st century.

"In every profession, people are always looking for those mega events that 
allow people to define themselves," said Fred Siegel, a professor of 
history at Cooper Union. "This falls into that category."

What was lost on these men and women, as they gathered in the Board of 
Estimate room, that relic of Tammany horse trading, was the fundamentally 
retrogade nature of their Olympic fantasy. As futuristic and captivating as 
their grand schemes might seem, this proposal is intrinsically 
old-fashioned­in its view of how power operates in the city, in its 
adoption of long-orphaned ideas, and in its retrograde faith in civic 
virtue and central planning. The idea is just so … 20th century.

The plan for a New York Olympics came to life over breakfast.

"Bob, I’ve got a crazy idea, but just listen to it for a minute. I think 
New York ought to host the Olympics."

Dan Doctoroff, who manages money and buys companies for the Bass family of 
Texas, was speaking to Robert Kiley, the head of the New York City 
partnership. They were at the Drake. It was 1996.

Mr. Doctoroff rocked back in his chair a bit. Mr. Kiley raised an eyebrow.

Mr. Doctoroff launched into his vision for bringing the world’s athletic 
competition to the world’s most cosmopolitan city. Within an hour, Mr. 
Kiley, a fixture in the pantheon of the city’s permanent government, had 
signed on.

In the years since, Mr. Doctoroff, with Mr. Kiley’s help, has been selling 
his crazy idea to anyone who will listen. The plan, as now constituted, 
includes an Olympic Village in Queens, athletic sites dotting the East 
River waterfront, a host of public transportation improvements, including a 
ferry system across the East River to Manhattan and running from the Bronx 
to Staten Island, and a West Side football stadium that would be 
expanded­literally pulled on rollers­one block south for Olympic use.

Mr. Doctoroff claims that the Olympics­which he has scheduled to open on 
July 27, 2012­will pump something like $10 billion into New York’s economy. 
He hopes the games will leave public sports facilities and economic 
development behind when they’re gone. And he says the games can be 
completely run with private money­he’s working with a $1.3 billion budget 
to build and renovate new venues. That doesn't include infrastructural 
improvements­diverting train lines, extending the No. 7 line west, running 
a ferry service around the city.

Right now, Mr. Doctoroff is running N.Y.C. 2012 on a $4.6 million budget 
(he hopes to raise $7 million before he’s done). Its 600-page bid must be 
submitted to the United States Olympic Committee in December. As of now, he 
said, his planners have timed the arrivals and departures of fantasy 
ferries down to the minute.

If the city beats out its seven U.S. competitors, it will go on to compete 
before the International Olympic Committee, which will announce a final 
decision in 2005.

For Mr. Doctoroff’s advisers, who have been honing their plans out of 
sight, the Olympics offer a chance to retouch the map of the New York, 
remaking it, in many cases, along lines they’ve contemplated for years. 
This is one of the chief selling points for his plan: The Olympics are a 
"catalytic event," he said, that spur the completion of all sorts of 
languishing projects.

"We haven’t had this kind of large-scale planning in this city in a quarter 
of a century, and when I talk to people about it, their reaction is that 
they’re almost thirsty for it," said Alex Garvin, the bid’s planning director.

For example, the rejuvenation of the East River waterfront. The Olympic 
Village would sit on industrial waterfront in Queens, across the East River 
from the United Nations. Athletes would travel to and from events by 
high-speed ferries and special trains.

On the Brooklyn waterfront, there would be venues for diving, water polo, 
volleyball, archery, beach volleyball and cycling. In Queens, at Robert 
Moses’ old World’s Fair grounds, those two wretched lakes would be dredged 
and reconfigured as one 2,000-meter-long rectangular rowing course. There 
would be boxing at the 369th Regiment Armory on the Harlem River Drive, and 
equestrian events on Staten Island, in La Tourette Park.

After the Olympics, organizers said, they would leave the athletic 
facilities to the community. They hope the Village can be repackaged as a 
5,000-unit middle-income apartment complex (that’s a lot of apartments, 
folks). The ferry system would keep running.

"The waterfront will begin to fill in with new jobs and new housing in the 
same way that that has happened in Silicon Alley, the same way it’s 
happened out in Flushing," Mr. Doctoroff said. "That legacy could last for 
100 years after the Olympics."

The plan’s centerpiece, however, is a massive new sporting complex on the 
West Side, on the railyard site where Mayor Giuliani desperately wants a 
sports stadium.

The plan is heavily dependent on the city reaching an agreement with the 
Jets to move there. New owner Robert Wood Johnson IV has said he does not 
want to stay at the Giants Stadium after the team’s lease runs out in 2008. 
If the team makes the jump, Mr. Garvin is ready with a stadium design that 
would allow the south end of the stadium to move down a block for the 
Olympics’ use.

"We’ve figured out how to convert a football stadium into an Olympic 
stadium," said Mr. Garvin. The technology, he said, is relatively 
low-tech­the same roller system was used to move a Times Square theater 
last year. "The engineers have figured out what’s involved."

Thinking bigger and bigger, organizers would like to build an entire 
complex surrounding the stadium, with an expanded Jacob K. Javits 
Convention Center, an office building, a hotel and a new Madison Square 
Garden surrounding an eight-acre Olympic Square. Why not get the 
Metropolitan Transportation Authority to extend the No. 7 subway line to 
run beneath the complex, and reroute commuter rails to stop there, too?

"The next place to expand is the West Side, and there’s no way to get 
there," said Sandy Lindenbaum, a prominent land use attorney who serves on 
the facilities advisory committee. "I’m talking about Ninth Avenue, 10th 
Avenue. That’s gotta happen."

Chelsea Piers developer Tom Bernstein, who also serves on the N.Y.C. 2012 
committee, placed the plan for the far West Side in the tradition of the 
great public projects of an earlier era.

"There was Rockefeller Center, there was Lincoln Center," Mr. Bernstein 
said. "This is one last opportunity in New York to take a totally derelict 
part of New York and do something fantastic with it."

"And obviously," he added, "it makes a lot of sense for me at the Piers. 
It’s a stone’s throw from here."

Give these guys credit for a beautiful idea. But there is no escaping it: 
Many of the people involved in the Olympic bid stand to gain something for 
themselves. A transportation hub on the West Side would boost property 
values in the old Garment District and along the Hudson, where developers 
have been gobbling up buildings at bargain rates. Politicians are jumping 
on board, hungry, no doubt, for a bit of reflected Olympic glory (not to 
mention projects for their districts). For hoteliers, there is the promise 
of the event of a generation. And maybe, just maybe, the plan would 
jump-start plans, long pushed by the hotel industry, to expand the Javits 
Center, which is jammed up and losing business to other cities.

"Certainly, that would be a major selling point in bringing larger and more 
groups to our city," said Jonathan Tisch, president of Loews Hotels, a 
N.Y.C. 2012 supporter.

For New York City Central Labor Council president Brian McLaughlin, who 
serves on the N.Y.C. 2012 facilities advisory council, it’s a matter of 
more jobs­union jobs. "We’re trying to put [a number] together, but 
obviously, it’s in the thousands if you just took the construction process 
alone," he said.

And what of Madison Square Garden? It obviously benefits if it relocates 
with a little help from taxpayers. Garden president David Checketts has 
been involved with the committee since 1996. Garden vice president Robert 
Russo currently serves on the facilities board. Garden officials did not 
respond to a request for comment.

Still, say those who have joined the bid, what really inspired them to sign 
on was the infectious enthusiasm of Mr. Doctoroff himself.

"I watched him at work, and saw that he was a human dynamo," Mr. Bernstein 
said.

Mr. Doctoroff, 41, is N.Y.C. 2012’s youthful face, the nobody holding all 
the somebodies together.

"Dan sort of came out of nowhere," said Mr. Bernstein.

"I hadn’t even asked him for money for Lincoln Center yet," said Nathan 
Leventhal, the center’s president, an early backer. "My God, I was falling 
down on the job."

Mr. Doctoroff grew up outside Detroit, and followed his wife to New York as 
a law student in 1983. He took a job at Lehman Brothers. After three years, 
he left to join Robert M. Bass as a partner in a firm specializing in 
leveraged buyouts and high-yield securities.

Mr. Doctoroff traced his love of the Olympics back to the 1968 Mexico City 
Olympics: "I vividly remember my brother and I sharing a room­I was 10, he 
was 8­and pretending that we were Bob Beamon setting the world long jump 
record by two feet." (Today, Mr. Beamon, a native of Harlem, serves on his 
advisory board.) Mr. Doctoroff said the idea for the New York Olympics came 
to him while attending a World Cup match between Italy and Bulgaria at the 
Meadowlands in 1994.

"I thought it was the most passionate sporting event, including the Rangers 
[Stanley Cup final] I had ever been to in my life," he said. His idea, 
originally, was to make a play for the 2008 games. After two years of quiet 
preparation, Mr. Doctoroff was ready to take his idea public. The key was 
gaining the ear of members of Manhattan’s business elite­whose political 
influence and deep pockets would make or break any bid. That was where Mr. 
Kiley came in.

In April 1996, Mr. Kiley and Mr. Doctoroff won over the Partnership’s 
executive board, including the chief executives of Chase Manhattan Bank and 
Met Life and the publisher of the New York Times. Mr. Doctoroff showed the 
board charts, figures and inspiring scenes from past Olympics and the city 
of New York.

Many of the chief executives at that meeting later went on to give Mr. 
Doctoroff the seed money to begin the bid preparations. N.Y.C. 2012 lists 
15 individuals, corporations and foundations as "major supporters." Among 
them are Chase Manhattan Corporation, Merrill Lynch & Company, Morgan 
Stanley Dean Witter & Company, the Real Estate Board of New York, Time 
Warner Inc., Bloomberg L.P., the Hearst Corporation, the Daily News and the 
New York Times Company.

Mr. Doctoroff assembled a core team of supporters, including developer 
Daniel Rose, Mr. Rudin, Mr. Betts, Mr. Bernstein, Mr. Leventhal and 
then-Deputy Mayors Fran Reiter and Randy Levine. A key to their early 
success was winning over Mort Zuckerman, whose newspaper, the Daily News, 
relentlessly promoted the project.

Things seemed to be moving right along. Then the United States Olympic 
Committee put the brakes on. The committee, figuring it was unlikely that 
the International Olympic Committee would choose another North American 
host so soon after the 1996 Atlanta games, decided to pass on bidding for 
the 2008 games. Mr. Doctoroff was crushed. He thought about giving up his 
dream.

But early last year, he began reaching out to old allies, putting back 
together his advisory boards and reconstituting the planning team, 
including Jay Kriegel, a former Lindsay administration deputy mayor who is 
serving as the bid’s executive director. Seven other U.S. cities are 
preparing bids: Baltimore-Washington, Cincinatti, Dallas, Houston, Los 
Angeles, San Francisco and a Florida proposal which includes sites in Tampa 
and Orlando. At a March 14 press conference, Mayor Giuliani surprised 
everyone present by pointing out that New York’s competitors "all have 
significantly more crime."

The first test for N.Y.C. 2012’s plans will come over the next few months, 
as they are tested against the $1.3 billion budget they figure the can 
finance strictly from Olympic economic benefits. Mr. Doctoroff has said he 
thinks the games can come off with no public investment, though some of his 
advisory board members are calling for city and state funds to support 
them, if they come.

If the city does win the I.O.C.’s nod in 2005, the city will have just 
seven years to decide whether they want to go along with Mr. Doctoroff and 
his big-city version of a chamber of commerce. The infrastructual 
improvements alone would require a massive coordination of the city and 
state agencies­and a huge investment of public cash.

"We’ll really have to rise above all the sorts of regulations and 
development issues that might ordinarily sort of deter and slow down 
projects like this, and say ‘New York wants to do this,’" said Mr. 
Bernstein. "It’s the equivalent of a declaration of war."

Mr. Bernstein may be onto something. Perhaps mindful of the inevitable 
opposition, the bid’s boosters have done everything possible to line up 
support before the plan gets tossed to the usual pack of antidevelopment 
groups, pandering politicians and skeptical citizens. All the power 
breakfasts and City Hall slideshows are just a prelude to the real 
challenge: persuading New Yorkers that the Olympics, and all its trappings, 
is worth the trouble.

"This is something that’s already a fait accompli among the ruling elites 
in the city," said Elliott Sclar, a professor of urban planning at 
Columbia. "It’s not even discussed anymore­it’s just a question of putting 
the bid together. So the question of whether we should do it never happened 
in a serious way."