Stan the Man’s Baseball Land sits across from the old Yankee Stadium. (Photo by flickr user DustonThomasJohnston)

During the build-up to the opening of the new Yankee Stadium, team officials touted the economic benefits it would bring to the South Bronx, and many of Yankee-centric merchants lining River Ave. supported the stadium. Even with its smaller capacity, the new stadium would attract more people to the area and thus, they reasoned, business would boom.

As the World Series drew to a close nearly two weeks ago, that economic reality was far from the truth, and in Year One, the new stadium had a negative impact on local businesses. As The Times, the Associated Press and WNYC all explored during the playoffs, sports stores and other businesses lining River Ave. have seen sales drop by nearly 20-40 percent this year.

“Many people who thought that their business would be greatly increased have not experienced that,” Ramón J. Jimenez, a South Bronx lawyer and community activist, said to The Times. “I think a lot of people are disappointed.”

The reasons for this downturn in sales are numerous. First, the bad economy has led consumers to curtail spending. Second, the Yankees averaged nearly 8000 fewer fans per game this year than last. Even with eight additional home games in the playoffs, attendance totals for 2009 were still lower than they were for 2008.

More important though are the amenities in the new stadium. The old Yankee Stadium was not a shopper’s paradise. It featured a few cramped souvenir stands, few dining options and concourses that made heading straight to the seats an attractive option for all fans. The new stadium features 125 concession stands, 56 souvenir shops and multiple dining options. It was designed, as all new stadiums are, to be a self-contained economy. Get your hat, get your t-shirt, get your beer and your fries and even your Porterhouse steak all right here.

Many aren’t — and shouldn’t be — surprised by this turn of events. Neil deMause culled reactions from those who had foreseen this unfortunate impact. “When you look at this new generation of stadiums, they’re little walled cities,” Robert Baade, sports economist said. “They’re trying to capture as much spending as possible inside the stadium, and that really works against spillover to the neighborhoods. Why go out into the neighborhood if you can get everything you want right there?”

Others — such as Joyce Hogi — noted that, earlier in the year, the police had barricaded the streets so that people could not cross to the businesses. A few weeks into the season, though, the barriers were gone, and by the end of the year, businesses weren’t suffering as much.

As Yankee Stadium heads into Year Two, merchants will nervously await the economic reality of it for Year Two will be the true indication of impact. One River Ave. vendor during the World Series noted that the Yanks sold the on-field World Series patch hat in the Stadium for $50 while merchants outside were willing to accept $40. (Editor’s Note: The same cap was available at the Yankees Clubhouse store and online for $35.) If the economics of merchandise continue in this vein, equilibrium will soon be restored, and the losses would represent a one-year dip as fans recover from the novelty of a new stadium.

Maybe we Yankee fans should make more of an effort to visit those River Ave. merchants and give them some business. They are, after all, a colorful part of the Yankee experience in the Bronx, and we should be mindful of them as the Yankees fortify themselves with a new stadium and the monetary benefits of it.

That photo — that heartbreaking shot inside of the House that Ruth Built — is the latest from Tom Kaminski in Chopper 88. The WCBS AM man in the sky flew over Yankee Stadium this week and snapped some shots of the crews hard at work. The stadium is slowly emptying out, and in a few months, it will start to come down.

Meanwhile, New York 1 featured a story yesterday about the wait in the South Bronx for the parks. I’ve covered this angle of the new stadium extensively, and the New York 1 story focuses on community resentment. The destruction of the stadium will be complete by the summer, and the replacement parks will open in 2011. Although neighborhood activists are still upset, this timeline has been in place for the last 18 months. Still, the South Bronx will have suffered through five years without adequate parkland, and the Yanks will be starting their third season in the new stadium when the parks finally open.

Finally, the destruction of the building is an official fait accompli. Two weeks ago, the Department of Buildings approved the full demolition certificate for the old stadium. If bureaucratic paperwork is your thing, take a peak at the filings. We’ll have more on the old and new stadium as we continue to wrap up the 2009 season over the next few weeks.

As the Yankees worked throughout 2008 to build their new stadium, a story about one of their contractors — and a subsequent indictment of that contractor — came to light. In June 2008, a Times story revealed that the city was investigating Testwell Laboratories for skimping on its concrete testing, and last October, the company was indicted. On both occasions, the Yankees said an independent contractor had verified the tests. Everything was supposedly a-OK with the new stadium concrete pours.

Today, The Times tells us a different story. William K. Rashbaum and Ken Belson report that cracks have appeared in the stadium ramps. Although the Yanks say these cracks are cosmetic, it could cost a few million dollars to repair the problem and may involve chipping out the entire ramp in order to rebuild it from scratch. Says the article:

The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.

The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.

The Yankees have hired an engineering company to take samples from the ramps — they ascend from field level to the stadium’s upper tiers, carrying thousands of people each game — to determine the cause and the extent of the problems as the team finishes its first season in the new stadium and prepares for what could be its first World Series there.

While no one yet knows if Testwell is responsible or if any of the other concrete companies who worked on the stadium are, if the troubled company is found to be the cause of this problem, it would be the first time Testwell’s work was found to be defective.

The key takeaway here, though, is this from Rashbaum and Belson:

The problems also underscore the inadequacies in the process by which the city vets contractors on projects like the stadium, which was financed in significant part by the city but built by a private developer, Tishman-Speyer. The procedures for screening contractors on projects financed by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, as the stadium was, are less rigorous than for projects built and paid for by the city.

Hopefully, tonight, the stadium will be rocking, and in a few weeks, the Yanks will fix this concrete-related problem.

On Friday, a few hours before the Yanks’ classic ALDS Game 2 victory, ESPN.com unleashed a rather interesting Outside the Lines on us. Wright Thompson went quasi-undercover to experience the $2500 $1250 Legends Seats at the new Yankee Stadium, and he wrote a treatise on sports ticket prices. He piece goes a long way toward explaining why the Yanks’ premium seats were priced so high, why the prices will crash and whether or not this experiment in ostentatious stadium experiences was a success.

Generally, we know the story. In April, the Legends Suites were embarrassingly empty and not until the Yanks halved the sticker price did the seats start to fill up. Meanwhile, Thompson, who bought his one seat on StubHub, got just a print-out to show for it. For $1250, he doesn’t even get a real ticket stub. This trend in digital ticketing, writes Thompson, is just one part of the death of fan faithfulness. How can you make an archive of ticket stubs if all you have is a black-and-white 8.5×11 print out?

As Thompson explores the champagne and Chilean turbot that Legends fans can enjoy, he talks about how Wall St. created this new Yankee Stadium seating monstrosity. The demand created by a flush Wall Street fed the Yankee Stadium ticket market throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Seats in the lower ring became more and more expensive simply because firms were willing to pay for them. But the Yankees, says Thompson, overplayed their hand:

In the same way, the use of tickets has changed, though it has less to do with the market collapsing and more to do with the Fidelity guys getting busted. You can probably guess what happened next: a proposed SEC rule governing expenses that could forever alter the way Wall Street entertains. To get out front of the SEC, many firms have instituted their own internal controls requiring gifts worth more than $100 to be reported. A computer program has been purchased by more than 200 companies that, for the first time, allows statistics to be kept on ticket use, including how much business each one brings in.

So … just as companies were trying to limit extravagant spending, the Yankees came out with the most extravagant tickets in the history of sports, designed in part for a group of people who could no longer buy them. “They killed the golden goose,” a former Bear Stearns guy says. “When the new prices came out, everybody said, ‘Are you kidding? We can’t even give these to clients.’”

Why? Well, first of all, the sell-side guys now face greater scrutiny about what they can gain by using the tickets. I talked to one Barclays big shot who explained it like this: “The real issue is: Do you want to go to the trouble of taking your client to the Yankee game when you know your boss has an expectation of what’s supposed to come out of the game that’s different than what the client has. Before, the firm’s expectations were low because the investment was low and the client’s expectations were low. Now we’re laying out eight grand on these tickets and you get paid on a 10 percent rate. That’s 80 grand worth of commissions that needs to get done before you get back to even. And 80 grand of commissions at 2 cents a square, in the equity business, what’s that, 4 million shares of stock? If this client does 4 million shares of stock with you, then you’ve made your investment back.”

Second, the buy-side now believes the tickets cost so much that they’d feel a quid pro quo. Yankees games went from something small to something like a trip to the Masters. One buy-sider told me: “I’ve been offered really good seats a couple of times, but I haven’t taken tickets from a broker in the new stadium. I’d feel like I owed the guy.”

As the piece goes on, we know where it’s going. Thompson talks to Louis Gimble IV, a hops magnate whose family had owned Yankee Stadium season tickets since the Great Depression. The Yanks wanted to move Gimble and up his per-game ticket price from the unaffordable $225 to the outrageous $900 level.

In the end, I know where I want to be. I’ve grown to like the new park. While I was opposed to it at first, the stadium is here for good. I’ll stick with what Thompson calls the “regular fans” in the 400 level. Those are my seats.

Meanwhile, the Yankees will have to come to terms with a failed experiment. They couldn’t get $2500 a seat and are already reducing next year’s ticket prices for the Legends Suites. It was worth a shot, but the bad economy, market regulation and the economics of commission-driven deals on Wall Street eluded the stadium planners. Greed might have suited Gordon Gecko, but the Yankees will be subject to the whims of the open market when it comes to pricing their tickets.

New York City Transit will roll out the Lo-V Nostalgia Train for an afternoon ride up to Yankee Stadium. (Photo via NYCTSubwayScoop on Twitter)

With tonight’s and Friday’s 6:07 p.m. start for the first game of the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Minnesota Twins, the MTA is facing something of a logistical challenge. In the past, playoff games have started toward the end of the evening rush, and the MTA never really had to juggle service. This week, though, Metro-North is beefing up its pre-game service, and New York City Transit is rolling out the Nostalgia Train for a ride to the Bronx.

We’ll start with the fun news. At 3:45 p.m., the four-car Lo-V Nostalgia Train will leave Grand Central Terminal en route to the Bronx. It will make all express stops along Lexington Ave. and should arrive at Yankee Stadium at around 4:20 p.m.

To read more about the Nostalgia Train and to find out about the planned increases in Metro-North service to and from Yankee Stadium during the playoffs, click through to Second Ave. Sagas.

No matter how we slice or dice the numbers, the Yankees had a down year at the gate. Playing in a new ballpark, the team sold out just two home games, and although MLB’s overall attendance declined by 6.65 percent in 2009, the Yankees saw a 13.5 percent dip in home attendance. A perfect storm of overpriced seats and a bad economy led to this dip, and the Yankees are already working on correcting the problem for 2010.

On Monday afternoon, with all but one regular season game left in all of baseball, Maury Brown released his 2009 attendance wrap-up. For the Yankees, the numbers tell an interesting story. The team drew 3,719,358 in paid attendance this year for a per-game average of 45,918. According to the Yankees’ figures, this total represents just 87.8 percent of capacity for the season.

Let’s put these numbers in perspective. Their overall attendance and per-game average were both second best to Joe Torre’s Dodgers, but for the Yankees, second-best is a new position. They have led the league in attendance every year since 2002. This is the first year since 2004 that they have failed to draw over 4 million fans, and their per-game average had not been below 47,788 since 2003. Their 87.8 percent capacity rate is also a five-year low.

One of the primary causes of this attendance dip is the new Stadium’s capacity. With an alleged capacity of 52,325, new Yankee Stadium never saw a crowd larger than 49,005 pass through the gates. To those who have followed our coverage of the new Stadium, this development comes as no surprise.

Meanwhile, the other driving factor behind this dip were the ticket prices. Early in the season, the empty Legends Seats made the headlines, and although the Yanks eventually lowered the prices on those seats, pockets of empty blue marked those high-priced areas throughout the summer. Last month, we reported on adjusted ticket prices for 2010, and yesterday, the Yankees announced a few new ticket policies for 2010. The team is breaking up the Legends Suites and will be adding a second tier of lesser-priced-but-still expensive seats with fewer amenities. The AP reports:

A total of 538 seats along the foul lines will be called the Champions Suite and will no longer have access to the duplex restaurant behind home plate, according to the team’s 2010 premium seat plan. Those seats cost $500 to $1,000 this year as part of full season tickets but will sell for $300 to $500 next year. They will still have waiter service and access to lounges down each foul line with free food to take to the seats and soft drinks.

Their removal leaves 1,357 seats in the Legends Suite. [These] seats behind the plate, which fetched $850 to $2,500 this season, will cost $650 to $1,250 next year, while seats behind the half of the dugouts nearer to home plate and the section just to the plate side will go for $800 to $1,500.

Apparently, the Yanks’ great ticket pricing experiment was a little to rich for the tastes of 2009. We’ll see how the team fares next season, but if the playoff plans for standing-room only work out and ticket demand increases as the costs go down, the Yanks should see an increase in attendance next year.

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Meanwhile, as a brief post-script, the Yankees will not be allowing backpacks into Yankee Stadium during the playoffs. Although stadium security regulations had been relaxed during the regular season, per order of the Office of the Commissioner and the NYPD, the team is asking its fans to mindful of heightened security efforts during the playoffs. I’ll be there in the new SRO areas behind section 229 for Game 2 of the ALDS, sans backpack of course.