Residents, preservationists want park answers
ByWith the new Yankee Stadium gearing up for its second season of baseball, the Daily News checked in on the city’s effort toward replacing the parkland lost in the South Bronx when the city ceded the Macombs Dam Park to the Yanks. As we know, the old stadium is still mostly standing, and residents are unhappy that replacement parks won’t open until 2011. The city says the stadium will be completely dismantled by the end of the summer, but it will still take at least a year to turn the land under old Yankee Stadium into Heritage Park. That project is approximately a year behind schedule, and as some, but not all, replacement parks have opened, Juan Gonzalez is unsurprisingly up in arms.
Meanwhile, our friends at Save the Gate 2 are still trying to save some of the old Yankee Stadium. While the Parks Department hasn’t accepted the group’s plan, it hasn’t been outright rejected yet either, and because the city’s Design Commission continues to ask the Parks Department for a plan that better commemorates Yankee Stadium, the old gate could still avoid the wrecking ball. These issues could come to a head tomorrow night at 6 p.m. when the Parks Department holds a public meeting at 198 E.161st St. on the myriad issues surrounding the parks. As I know from my work on transit issues, city government moves slowly, if at all.
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In this economy, with Federal, State and Local governments all bleeding red ink like crazy, it’s going to be even more difficult to raise funds for something like ‘Save Gate 2′. That’s the kind of thing that needed to be built into the original bond package.
In response to your post, I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about. The Yanks spend so much time and money building their brand that the last thing they want to do is screw over the poor local kids of the Bronx.
I suspect Gonzalez is just grandstanding, to make it look like he’s getting results on something that will happen anyway.
Oh, it’s not the Yankees to blame for this one. The city has done a pretty job from day one in dismantling and replacing the park land. That’s pretty much on them.
Gonzalez’s column is also probably the most predictable one he’s written in years, and that’s saying something.
In response to your post, I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about. The Yanks spend so much time and money building their brand that the last thing they want to do is screw over the poor local kids of the Bronx.
I’m not saying they’d go out of their way to screw some poor kids, but I wouldn’t be so sure they’re terribly interested in making a serious gesture, either.
The issues surrounding the parks around Yankee Stadium are only one example of the conflicts which emerge between local communities and private/government interests with the building of new sports complexes.
When any new stadium is proposed, it is always couched in all of the benefits it brings to the local community–often jobs, tax revenues, and new recreation areas. However, studies have shown that rarely, if ever, are any of the benefits directed towards the community. Even the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank which one might expect to be behind such development, questioned the argument that building new sports complexes add revenues above the cost in public monies (both direct and in-direct). In fact, they found that “the professional sports environment—which includes the presence of franchises in multiple sports, the arrival or departure of teams, and stadium construction—may actually reduce local incomes.”
The problem, it seems to me, is not simply that the parks have not yet been built (as there always are, there are various “reasonable” explanations for why it has taken so long…zoning and demolition laws, for example). The problem is that these new stadiums never meet the promises which are made to the local communities when they are proposed. If there is community anger over the delay in replacing the parks it is because it goes along with a series of promises which always seem to get “delayed” when local communities are involved, but never seem to have any trouble getting passed when corporations want something done.
Think about it from the perspective of someone who lives in the relatively poor neighborhood around Yankee stadium and watches as a new stadium costing more than a billion dollars goes up in a year, while two years later your parks are gone, you learn that there was questionable analysis in determining the value of the land (and thus possible tax and financing “perks” that the Yankees received), the new jobs are not materializing…
The parks are just the manifestation of deeper anger and anxieties.
These stadiums are sold to the local community as enhancing the public welfare and, while they are often marvels of technical engineering, they rarely live up to what is promised.
One might expect AEI to support government intervention in local economies? Whoa.
Depends on what kind of “government intervention” you are referring to: turning public land over to private investment with additional tax breaks for corporations, yes. Government-funded job and health programs, no.
My point, however, was that while some might dismiss Gonzalez’s arguments as those of as a “liberal” journalist, even “conservative” publications have raised questions about stadium-building as it pertains to the promised benefits for local communities.
Well said.
Moneyshot, repeated for emphasis:
The problem, it seems to me, is not simply that the parks have not yet been built (as there always are, there are various “reasonable” explanations for why it has taken so long…zoning and demolition laws, for example). The problem is that these new stadiums never meet the promises which are made to the local communities when they are proposed. If there is community anger over the delay in replacing the parks it is because it goes along with a series of promises which always seem to get “delayed” when local communities are involved, but never seem to have any trouble getting passed when corporations want something done.
A commemorative brick drive (like what was done at Citi Field) has been proposed to offset most or all of the costs of preserving Gate 2.
I’m confused…
Is the original gate just underneath the additions from the construction? Is it still intact?
Supposedly, the vast majority if the structure that exists as Gate 2 is the original Gate 2 from 1923. If the additions are removed, the gate itself would stand as a memorial to the original stadium, and preservationists think it’s the part of the new stadium least impacted by subsequent renovations.
so then on that savegate2 site they show the “yankee stadium” and those eagle’s, which would not be the originals?
I’m pretty sure the eagles are original and are still there on Gate 2 today if you look closely enough.
oh ok this makes more sense now. thanks
Actually, when the Stadium was renovated the eagles were removed, although the original balconies and arches remain.
yeah this article says that the original lettering and the eagles were removed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10.....adium.html
Plus the Gate has the most interesting design aspects of the entire perimeter wall (balconies, terra cotta features), not to mention its symbolic location right across from the new stadium . . old to the new.
And its location is very close to the street, so none of the new park ammenities would be impacted.
anyone expect nyc and ny state gov’t to work well??? we got boobs like patterson running things. maybe if he his buddies were involved in the deal and could profit of it like the slot deal he would come thru and push something.
i don’t know enough about the specifics of demolition, permits, etc to say who’s to “blame” for the delays, but i wish the yankees would be more pro-active in their relations with the neighborhood. when he was pushing to move the team into manhattan, george treated the misery of the south bronx as an inconvenience, something that was costing him money. now that the team has built a permanent home, they should do everything possible to ensure that the neighborhood actually benefits from the global cash machine that is the “bronx bombers” brand
/socialist rant’d