New Yankee Stadium
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New Yankee Stadium is the working title for a new stadium for the New York Yankees, currently in development stages. It is planned to be built on the current site of Macombs Dam Park in the New York City borough of The Bronx, across the street from the current Yankee Stadium, which opened in 1923.
Groundbreaking for the stadium is slated for 2006, with a 2009 opening (the same year as New Mets Ballpark)
Design
The new stadium's design, by HOK Sport, would mimic some of Yankee Stadium's features. The field's dimensions would be identical. The new stadium would seat 50,000 fans, compared with 57,545 in Yankee Stadium. It would eliminate Yankee Stadium's trademark upper deck, which imposes over opposing teams with 30,000 seats. Its steep incline has long created batters' box shadows in the late afternoon, which make seeing the baseball extremely difficult for unaccustomed hitters. Instead, the new stadium would feature an upper tier that's a little more than half the size. It would not be on a steep incline, which gives fans seated very high a bird's eye view of the field. The new stadium's seating would be spaced outward, rather than upward, placing most fans much further away from the field. Field-level seats would near 30,000, compared with 20,000 in Yankee Stadium. There would be half as many bleacher seats as Yankee Stadium's 7,500. There would be 60 luxury boxes between the two decks, along with many field-level areas sectioned off for high-price corporate clients. Yankee Stadium has 16 luxury boxes.A cinder-block wall would form a perimeter around the new stadium, separating the fans from the Yankees' Bronx neighborhood. This wall would replicate Yankee Stadium. It would feature a façade whose design is based on the copper frieze that lined the inner wall of Yankee Stadium's upper deck until 1973. This lining was torn down during the 1974–75 renovations. A replica of this façade lines the portion of the original structure that was removed during those renovations, beyond the outfield wall. It is above the bleachers and faces River Avenue. The Yankees already use this façade as a marketing tool on television and in print, and have allowed the sporting-goods chain Modell's to use it as well.
Between the perimeter wall and the stadium would be more than one million square feet of retail space. This would allow the Yankees to acquire much of the concession money that fans have been spending in local neighborhood businesses since Yankee Stadium opened in 1923.
The famed Monument Park, which features four freestanding monuments and a few dozen plaques dedicated to some of the Yankees' great players and managers (and Yankee Stadium visitors) beyond the left-center field wall, would be relocated to the new stadium. The Yankees' retired numbers, which reside just in front of Monument Park, would also be relocated.
Transportation
The New York State Legislature agreed to $70 million in subsidies for a $320 million parking garage project. It is not clear who would fund the remaining $250 million and who would reap the parking revenue. This would give the Yankees approximately 3,000 more parking spaces than the current stadium has.For several decades, transportation and community groups have urged the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build a station for the Metro-North commuter railroad's Hudson Line, which runs adjacent to Yankee Stadium. Although the MTA has budgeted money for such a station each year since the 1980's, the agency has been leery of construction unless Yankee ownership committed to staying in the Bronx. With the possibility of the new stadium, a plan was made to construct the station and provide service on all three of Metro-North's lines as well as provide a shuttle train between the stadium and Grand Central Station.
Financing
After a 2001 proposal by outgoing Mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani to construct new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets that involved the city paying for half of the costs was immediately discarded by his successor Michael Bloomberg, the Yankees decided to privately finance the stadium. In doing this, the team scrapped plans for a retractable roof and half of the proposed luxury boxes. The estimated total for the stadium's construction stands at $800 million USD, with the team covering any cost overruns.An estimated $450 million in public subsidies would pay for improvements to infastructure surrounding the stadium and its neighborhood. The team would own the stadium and the city will own the parking garages that will be built for game traffic.
While the stadium will have Yankee Stadium in its name, naming rights will be sold. Possibilities include Yankee Stadium at (sponsor) Plaza or (sponsor) Yankee Stadium.
Controversy
The stadium project has been given a Bronx cheer by community groups, urban planners, and parks, health, and public transportation advocates. In the fall, Bronx Community Board 4 voted against the project (the board's decisions are nonbinding), which would be the most expensive stadium ever built in the United States.The transfer of Macombs Dam and John Mullaly parks was passed by the New York State Legislature without a public hearing in the days after the stadium’s design was unveiled. Opponents say this violates state and federal laws designed to protect parkland. City officials, including Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, say the parkland will be replaced with better parks. Community groups say the new parklike features would be small and scattered, compared with the 22 acres of central, continuous open space that is now available. Some parklike features would be built on the Harlem River waterfront, which is one mile away from the current parkland and requires walking under an interstate highway and over railroad tracks to access. Ten acres of the replacement parklike features would be built on artificial surface atop new parking garages; these parklike features would be closed to accommodate fans' cars on game days, which make up half of the summer. Other parklike features would be built on the 9-acre site of Yankee Stadium, which would be completely torn down. The city has agreed to pay $103 million for the new parklike features and $27 million to demolish Yankee Stadium, and Health advocates are concerned about the effect of increasing exhaust fumes and loss of 377 mature trees on this Bronx neighborhood, which has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the city.
The stadium itself would be paid for with $866 million in tax-free bonds from the city, state, and federal governments; the Yankees would repay those bonds. Major League Baseball’s 2002 collective bargaining agreement allows teams to deduct up to 40 percent of new-stadium costs from their revenue-sharing responsibilities. For the Yankees, who consistently boast the league's highest payroll and revenue, this means more than $300 million of their stadium’s costs may be kept out of the revenue sharing pool, and away from the 16 lowest-revenue teams in the Majors.
Pro-stadium beliefs
City officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, say the neighborhood will benefit from the new stadium and parklike features. Yankees President Randy Levine says a new stadium will create thousands of jobs for the community. The New York City Economic Development Corporation, whose members are appointed by the mayor, says the stadium would increase the city’s tax base by $96 million over a 30-year period.It also ensures that the Yankees will remain in New York City for the next several decades. The team had given some consideration to a move to the Meadowlands Sports Complex because of alleged safety issues in the South Bronx, but record game attendance through much of the 2000s has rendered such an argument moot.
Community groups want the Yankees to use several available parcels of land south of East 161st Street to build their stadium, or to renovate Yankee Stadium. A plan being discussed in 1998 estimated the cost of stadium renovation at $200 million. Renovating the existing parkland would cost about $25 million.
The New York Industrial Development Agency approved more than $900 million worth of bonds to fund the construction and infrastructure for New Yankee Stadium.
External links
- [Newsday.com New Yankee Stadium]
- [Ballparks.com overview of proposed stadium]
- [Save Our Parks, a group against the construction of the stadium project]
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