Be Our Guest: Park the soccer stadium deal

Howard Simmons/New York Daily News

These parking garages on 153rd St. and River Ave. near Yankee Stadium could be converted into space for a new Major League Soccer stadium.

Only a few years after the Bloomberg Administration pushed a $ 1 billion subsidy deal for a new stadium for the Yankees, we are back at home plate waiting for a pitch that’s supposed to help the team score.

But, if a behind-the-scenes, last-minute proposal to convert underutilized and subsidized parking spaces at Yankee Stadium into a soccer stadium come to fruition, taxpayers won’t be scoring a deal, we’ll be stuck with a costly mistake again.

The Yankees recently joined forces with the Barclays Premier League Soccer Club Manchester City to establish the area’s second Major League Soccer franchise, and they’d like to find a location to build a stadium and have taxpayers help pay the tab. We’ve seen this play before.

Acquiescing to the demands of the Yankees for expanded parking at the new Stadium, which opened in 2009, the city set course on a plan that destroyed 24 acres of natural parkland to build the stadium and parking facilities.

The city also helped create a nonprofit organization as a conduit to publicly finance the construction of parking garages with tax-exempt bonds. The garages sit mostly empty — even on game days — leaving garage bondholders holding an empty bag and the garage owners unable to pay rent and taxes to the city.

Community residents and advocates balked loudly that coveted green space was being converted for cars that would never arrive and predicted that building and subsidizing the parking facilities would fail.

The precursors for this disaster were obvious, yet ignored: Only 39% of households in the Bronx have access to a car and Yankee Stadium is served by three subway lines, two bus routes and is within walking distance of a new Metro-North station. These were hardly the conditions that justified adding 75% more parking to the new Yankee Stadium.

The loss of parks is especially heartbreaking to the Bronx, which has the lowest ratio of parks to people in New York City: half an acre per 1,000 people, while New York City considers a ratio of 2.5 park acres per 1,000 people “well-served.” Clearly, this community is not.

Adding to the sting, the city spent millions of precious capital dollars to rebuild the lost park space, ironically much of it on top of the new parking garages that would be torn down for the new soccer stadium.

But the Yankees want more than just taxpayer money to pave the way for a new soccer stadium; a local business could get paved over, too.

Family-owned business GAL Manufacturing, which produces elevator parts, is next to one of the underused garages and is in the footprint of the proposed soccer stadium.

The company, with roots in the city dating to the 1920s, has more than 350 employees, and last year was awarded New York State financing to install one of the city’s largest solar panel arrays.

Regardless of how much money the Yankees throw at the firm to move, instead of being a model of solar technology, it might end up being the new soccer stadium’s sacrificial lamb.

Pushing through a corporate giveaway deal in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration circumvents incoming Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s agenda to focus on the economic needs of the majority of New Yorkers.

Taxpayer dollars have often subsidized suspect projects at great public cost, like the failed Yankee Stadium parking garages.

Instead, funds should increase park space, expand and improve subway and bus service, ensure streets can accommodate more pedestrians and bicyclists and build new and improving existing sidewalks, pedestrian islands, visible crosswalks, signage and signals so those walking, biking, and using transit can access the neighborhood safely.

Instead of cutting back-room deals, the community and local businesses must decide through an inclusive, transparent process what types of development are good for the local economy and quality of life.

[/DNDCTEXT]Bettina Damiani is the project director for Good Jobs New York. Veronica Vanterpool is the Executive Director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

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